In article , Richard Wright
writes
In the ethnographic museum in Cordoba (Argentina) there is a display
of Patagonian material culture. On a grindstone there lie nuts that
are (superficially, at least) indistinguishable in size and shape from
those of the Australian 'bunya' Araucaria bidwillii.

I can't find any reference on the web to the species in Patagonia from
which these nuts might have come.

The best known South American Araucaria is the Chile Pine or Monkey
Puzzle, which I thought was A. araucana, but IPNI doesn't seem to agree
with this. This does extend into Argentina.

A list of Araucaria names can be obtained from the following URL at IPNI
(International Plant Name Index).

URL:http://www.uk.ipni.org/ipni/IpniServ...amily=&infrafa
mily=&genus=Araucaria&infragenus=&is_apni_record=o n&species=&infraspecie
s=&is_gci_record=on&author_abbrev=&publication_tit le=&is_ik_record=on&sh
ow_rank=all&include_authors=on&include_basionym_au thors=on&query_type=by
_query

Most of these are Australasian, but there's a least one other South
American species, from southern Brasil. You could go through the list
and identify candidate species.

The implication of the following page at the University of Bonn is that
there's just the one species in Argentina.

URL:http://www.botanik.uni-bonn.de/conifers/ar/ar/

And the following page contains a photograph of the cones and seeds.

URL:http://www.conifers.co.nz/araucaria/...ropagation.htm
--
Stewart Robert Hinsley