If you've ever attempted to identify the towering tree at the corner of the Farmhouse only to be left scratching your head, you're not alone! We get asked all the time: Just what is this unusual plant?
With its spiky, scaly branches, it doesn't look very much like any of the trees we're used to seeing here in the Pacific Northwest, so it's no surprise that it has puzzled its fair share of visitors. Funny enough, it's actually called a Monkey Puzzle Tree — known to botanists as Araucaria araucana — perhaps alluding to the difficulty primates experience attempting to climb it. This evergreen conifer is native to the Andes mountains of South America, and when a specimen is happy, it can grow to an impressive 80' tall and 30' wide. And did we mention? These trees can can live for a long, long time.
Our Monkey Puzzle Tree is nearly 120 years old, and it happens to share an interesting connection with Portland history! In 1905, our city hosted the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition, an international affair featuring exhibits from multiple countries across the world, including Chile, where Araucaria araucana not only grows wild, but is actually the national tree. Chilean representatives brought hundreds of seedlings to give away at the Exposition, which found their way into gardens all across Portland, making ours just one of many Monkey Puzzle Trees still growing happily in Oregon soils as a reminder of the Centennial.
Even though our specimen is over a century old (you can see our tree in its teenage years pictured with three of the Blatter sisters in the 1920s), it's still quite young when you consider that this species can live for more than a thousand years in its native South American range. But that makes sense given its long-term success as a species, which dates back to prehistoric times. These trees appear in the fossil record as far back as 200 million years ago, and they have evolved many special adaptations that have been instrumental in helping them to stick around for all that time. Their spiky needles help them to successfully avoid predation by grazing animals, and they even have fire-resistant bark to help them survive lava flows, since they often grow on the rocky slopes of volcanoes.
Male and female trees have different cone shapes — oblong for male and round for female — and the female cones produces edible seeds that take two years to mature. Because our tree is a male, we can't propagate it by seed, but we do occasionally bring in seedlings from reputable growers so that you can invite one of these fascinating plants — and a piece of Portland's past — into your very own garden! These trees can successfully be grown in USDA Zones 7-11 and are happiest in full sun. They are much hardier than the closest related species that you might recognize: The Norfolk Island Pine, Araucaria heterophylla, which is often sold around the holidays as a living Christmas Tree that can be grown as a houseplant.
If you'd like to take one of these trees home with you, we have several small specimens in stock right now. Check them out below!
