Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. This tree is an Araucaria araucana, or monkey puzzle tree. It's native to Chile, and was discovered by Europeans in 1782. The name comes from the Araucarian people who ate the rich seeds inside these rough cones:
The species is so ancient it's called a living fossil, and the branches look reptilian with those overlapping scales. I call mine that razor blade tree, because the scales are sharp as knives. It has stabbed me in the posterior many times when I've tried to weed around it. I bought it years ago off a nursery sale table when it was a harmless, cute little stick. It's outgrown its pot and the space-- but tough luck, tree. I can't get near it now without a suit of armor.
You occasionally see massive specimens in Seattle front yards, planted over a hundred years ago when it was still an oddity in America. It's a slow growing, messy tree and it doesn't even produce cones for 40 years; it can live to be 1,000. They like a temperate climate with abundant rainfall (that's us) and they are fairly tolerant of cold. In the United States you will only find them on parts of the east and west coasts.
Oh yes, the origin of the popular name came from England in about 1850. The owner of a garden in Cornwall was showing one to his friends and said, "it would puzzle a monkey to climb that." And only a dumb monkey would try.
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