Wondering whether to plant a Monkey Puzzle in your front garden?

Listen to this podcast episode to help you decide where you should plant this wonderful tree. There are few key takeaways - it may be slow growing for the first 10 years but after that it will probably grow 30cm a year! Prepare for it to be taller than your house in 30 years time.

Where do Monkey Puzzle trees come from?

Monkey Puzzle trees come from Chile.

Araucaria araucana to give it it’s Latin name, is called Pehuén in the Mapuche language in Chile and it is the country’s national tree. This photograph was taken by Eduardo Olate our Chilean horticultural expert in the podcast episode. He took the picture in 2006 at Mamuil Malal Pass, Araucania Region, Southern Chile on the border with Argentina. In the background you can see the Lanin Volcano, partially covered by clouds.

These trees grow in mountainous regions where the soil is poor but the drainage is good. Its adapted to high altitude and a dry season. So Araucaria Araucana doesn’t like to sit with its ‘feet’ in wet conditions.

Where it lives in the mountainous regions there is a short growing season when the temperature is 10-20 c. So if you plant it in your garden in the UK, where the average temperature is 18-25 c and we get plenty of rain - you can see why it grows fast, once it gets going.

A case study of a Monkey Puzzle planted in a front garden.

In this case it is Andrea’s front garden. The tree was planted by the previous owners of the house. It was the husband’s 50th birthday present and was planted right in front of the house. The first tree was stolen! So the owners bought and planted a second one.

When the owner sold the house to Andrea, she took time to show her every photo of the Monkey Puzzle tree as it grew taller and taller in the front garden. You can see some of the photos below. So although it was on Andrea’s list of things to get rid of, she couldn’t bring herself to do it and so for the 12 years she has lived in the house it has continued to grow. Is is now about a foot away from the telephone wires!

Can you move it - well it has a very deep root and as you can see from the pictures it is very spikey so I am not sure how easy it would be to move an established Monkey Puzzle tree so perhaps best to make sure you know how big it might grow and plant it in the right place!

Should I buy a male or a female tree?

The tree may not reach sexual maturity till its 15 to 20 years old so you won’t know whether you have a male or female tree until it starts to produce cones.

The male cones are cylindrical, around 13cm long, and start as green before turning yellow, then brown once the pollen is released. The female cones are spherical, around 17cm across and contain around 200 seeds each, which are released when the cones fall apart in autumn.

Andrea’s female tree produces seed pods which explode all over the front garden and she has managed to get some of them to germinate. There is no sign of a male Monkey Puzzle tree that could have pollinated it so that is a bit of a mystery. Could it be a passing bird? Apparently its rare but some trees can have male and female flowers though Andrea’s doesn’t appear to have this. Listen to the podcast to get Eduardo’s view.

The nuts are edible and if you want to know how to cook them, Eduardo sent me this helpful Youtube video - depending on your Spanish you may have to switch on the subtitles!

Would dinosaurs have known these trees?

Eduardo’s American professor seeing the Monkey Puzzle in the wild for the first time said “we just need some dinosaurs to complete the landscape!” I think you can see what he meant from Eduardo’s photographs below and fossils show that dinosaurs may well have been the first to see the ancestors of these magnificent trees.

How did these trees come to be in the UK?

The story of how the tree came to the UK involves a banquet and you can hear it in this Bonus  episode. It’s alleged that Archibald Menzies stole the Monkey Puzzle nuts from the dinner table and propagated them. The extraordinary shape of this tree attracted a lot of attention, Queen Victoria wanted one for Prince Albert and as over the ensuing decades more seeds were gathered from Chile, the trees became available from nurseries.

They were planted in large arboretums, we’ll be returning to Dropmore near Windsor in the Offshoot. In some places they were planted as avenues and of course they were also grown in smaller spaces where perhaps the gardener wasn’t quite aware how big they might grow.

They are very spikey though I have now heard two stories of people who have climbed them - maybe never again!

There are groups on Facebook of gardeners who have a Monkey Puzzle tree. I’ve seen adverts selling them on Facebook Market Place but perhaps those are from people who no longer want or have room for them? This episode may sound just a little note of caution if you are tempted to buy one!

How to Grow a Monkey Puzzle Tree

Where to plant it?

Eduardo: Maybe people don't know the speed of the growth. Maybe they think that what they’ve seen is a very old tree, maybe 100 years old. But probably it's only 20 years old. In 10 years, you will have a good size, a good front garden size plant, the full thing, in 15 years for sure. I think it's still popular because of its looks. It's so interesting, it's so unique, but only for a very big garden, way in the back as a focal point, or for parks. You will have to move it or cut it down if it's too close to a pavement or to the entrance of the house or a playground. I've seen them in public parks all over London for sure. They keep planting them, which is lovely to see but always with a protection.

What kind of soil and aspect?

In the matter of soil, it's quite forgiving. The only thing that it doesn't like is poor drainage, it's a mountainous species, so it's used to perfect drainage. They don’t like to have their feet wet all the time, no, that's not for the Monkey Puzzle tree. It needs plenty of sunlight, it's a tree, it's a pine. So it's not an indoor plant, it can survive because it doesn't want to die, it's a very tough species but it will not grow best as an indoor plant.

And temperature-wise, the one in Edinburgh is happy and outside with no problem. I would say that Scotland, probably southern Scotland, is the limit. Although if you have a protected area in Scotland, especially in the west coast of Scotland, it can even grow there with no problem. There are some specimens in Norway, actually. So southern Norway, but still Norway.

How tall might it grow in 10 years?

Well you can calculate that maybe around 30 centimeters per year in the best conditions. So in the first years, the growth is quite slow but after year 10 let's say, you could expect at least 30 centimetres of growth every year, which is more or less the distance between one node and the next. So every year it will produce one layer of branches.

Could I put it in a pot!

No, only for the first five years, 10 years at the longest, I would say. Because again, the root needs to grow down. So it will start spiralling and spiralling and spiralling. Eventually it will strangulate itself if you keep it in a pot. You've got about five years before you have got to move to somewhere where you have a very large space with nothing else around, where you can plant it.

How do I grow it from seed?

Two things about the seed, it's a CITES species (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora), so it's protected and the international trade is almost impossible, you have to register. So to get a hold of seeds, it has to be local seeds. So probably there are some seeds that you can buy or share with someone who has a female tree with male trees around it. After you harvest the seed you only have around two months to actually plant the seed. It doesn't stay viable for long, you have to plant it quickly and also very shallow, very shallow, just the tip of the seed below and the rest of the seed above the soil.

Andrea sent me this link to another type of Araucaria - sold as a houseplant! Its called Araucaria heterophylla - Norfolk Island Pine. However unlike the Araucaria araucuna - David Gedye, who you will hear in the Offshoot episode, assures me: “it has a foliage you want to fall in love with. It is so tactile you stroke it every time you walk past the tree. I grew a Norfolk Island pine in our conservatory for eight/ten years. But it is a tree and trees want to grow to a great height, so it became too big for its pot, too high to fit into the conservatory and took up too much space.”

Good luck with your Monkey Puzzle adventures - if you have one or are planning to buy one - I’d love to know.

Enjoyed this plant story and want to listen to more?

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