Sandy's Garden ... Araucaria Araucaria

This garden was home to quite a number of what I would nowadays term ‘exotic’ plants – interesting plants which have been imported into Scotland from all over the world, often from faraway lands. (Please remember that this was many, many years ago, when long-distance travel to places like America, Australia or anywhere in the Far East was a feature of only our wildest dreams.)

Well, his father had travelled widely and had been in South America – the only person I knew who had actually sailed across the Atlantic Ocean. And whether he personally brought a … presumably young … Araucaria araucana home with him or bought a specimen for his garden after his return to Scotland I shall never know.

What I do know is that this was the only monkey puzzle tree whose whereabouts were known to me; and I was intrigued by this tree, so different from any other trees with which we were familiar.

Writing on the Thoughtco American website, Steve Nix captures something of the reason for my interest in it. “Monkey-Puzzle tree is a wild, "scary" evergreen with open splaying and spiralling branches. The tree can grow to 70 feet tall and 30 feet wide and forms a loose, see-through, pyramidal shape with a straight trunk. The tree is so open you can actually look through it.

The leaves are dark green, stiff, with sharp needles that cover the limbs like armour. Monkey-Puzzle tree makes an attractive, novelty specimen for large, open yards. It is seen in large numbers in California,” where Americans term their gardens ‘yards’.

Yes, ‘scary’ is quite a good adjective to apply to it. More technically, it is an evergreen, coniferous tree and is a member of a genus of trees … a family of trees … called Araucaria, the name being derived from the Araucani tribe in whose territory it was first found by Europeans. The monkey puzzle’s specific name … araucana … is simply a repetition of its generic name to differentiate it from other members of the family.

I learn from the website of PFAF … Plants for a Future … that the almond-sized seed can be eaten raw or cooked, are soft … like cashew nuts … and have a slight flavour of pine nuts.

They are said to be delicious and can easily be eaten in quantity, making them suitable as a staple part of one’s diet, a characteristic which is enhanced by virtue of the fact that, kept in cool, dry conditions, they can be stored for at least nine months. So we know what the Auracani did with the seed.

What brought the memory of that specific tree in Perth back to mind was the sight of a young monkey puzzle in a garden not a million miles from my present home, a tree which I must have passed quite regularly without ever noticing it – unless it is a recent planting.

It should thrive here provided its young roots are protected against a very hard frost for, once it is established, I’d expect it to cope the worst a local winter can offer. Monkey puzzles are an endangered species in their native lands by reason of logging, forest fires and the clearance of land for grazing; so perhaps it’s as well that they are now grown as ornamental trees in many countries.

Sadly, I fear that the small one I saw recently will not grow to a height of 30 or 40 metres … rather more than Steve Nix expects … with a trunk girth of between one metre and a metre-and-a-half, for I suspect that the leader shoot has been cut out to keep it low-growing.

Its name ‘monkey puzzle’ is said to have come from Cornwall about 1850 where, when Sir William Molesworth of Pencarrow was showing a young specimen to some friends including Charles Austin, that barrister said, "It would puzzle a monkey to climb that!”

Who knows? That seems to be as good a story as any.