A small grove of monkey puzzle trees once filled the centre of this fenced nineteenth-century garden.
Monkey Puzzle
Araucaria araucana
Every branch of a monkey puzzle is sheathed in thick, overlapping, scale-like leaves that stay sharp for decades, an armour scientists think evolved to keep long-necked herbivorous dinosaurs from stripping the crown, tens of millions of years before Araucaria araucana ever left the volcanic slopes of central Chile and Argentina. We map 3 of them, in 3 cities.
A Cornish gardener supposedly coined the English name in the 1830s, remarking that climbing one would puzzle a monkey; Victorian Britain then planted it obsessively, which is why a grove of them can still be found guarding a Scottish castle. It is Chile's national tree and endangered in the wild, felled for timber and burned in forest fires faster than it regrows. These are the monkey puzzles mapped on the site so far, oldest first.
Alicante
Edinburgh
Five monkey puzzle trees stand near the rose garden at Lauriston Castle, planted close to the exact year the species became fashionable enough for anyone outside a botanic garden to own one.
Caserta
Every other tree on this page stands behind a ticket gate.
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