bugger...
The Monkey Puzzle tree (Araucaria Araucana) that dominates my neighbour's front garden has fruited. Well, actually, it developed fruits two years ago, but now they have ripened, and there are little angular seed pods everywhere. The Monkey Puzzle is an Andean native, and was introduced to this country by Archibald Menzies in the 18th century, whilst on a plant hunting expedition it is reported that; dining in Chile he pocketed some of the nuts from the table, which he subsequently germinated during the voyage.Menzies seems to have been a man after my own heart, he was threatened with court-martial as a consequence of a dispute over his greenhouse on the quarterdeck of the Discovery.
I picked up a couple of the seeds, and picked at them (there are hundreds), and couldn't detect anything even vaguely seedlike. Subsequent enquiries have led me to discover that the blasted plant is dioecious, and requires a male (as are Holly trees, Date palms, and asparagus), so the chances of the seeds being viable are miniscule.
There are two more monkey puzzle trees in the locale (within 500 metres), neither of which are more than ten feet tall, unfortunately they take up to forty years to reach sexual maturity, and there is no way of identifying their gender until they achieve that maturity (also a problem if you are trying to cultivate Holly).
I suspect that we may well have ended up with the first Chilean Pine feminist collective, although I have no intention of being here to find out, the last backlash of the formerly disreputable elements who used to make this an interesting place to live, may have left us an unabashed collection of lesbian trees to embarrass the four-wheel drivers.
http://www.victorialodging.com/archibald_menzies.htm
posted by Lampy @ 7/29/2005 10:10:00 pm
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