128. Burry Man Tree

It’s tree #128 and I can hardly believe this is the first monkey puzzle. I hope you enjoy this fabulous example in Dundee.

Once you’ve passed the splendid preamble of oaks and sycamores lining the drive, Camperdown Park's most eye-catching tree is surely the exceptional monkey puzzle on the lawn close to the house. It is a great Burry Man of a tree, with an extravagant pelt of pendulous, spiny tentacles covering the entire trunk from the ground up. A rare silhouette for a species that typically balances brush-like canopies atop branch-free trunks.

Species details

Monkey puzzle
Araucaria araucana

Where to find it

Camperdown Park, Dundee DD2 4TD
///mess.talked.heartened | 56.484759, -3.0416910

The male cones of a monkey puzzle

Monkey puzzle notes

I’m sure I’m not alone when I recount how, as a child, monkey puzzles were one of the first trees I noticed and could positively identify, they were then and continue to be one of my favourite trees. I mean, who doesn’t love a monkey puzzle? And as any precocious tree-loving child will tell you, they are also known as Chilean pines, a reference to their native distribution in South America. There is an oft-repeated tale of how the species first arrive in Britain after Archibald Menzies, who was ship’s surgeon under George Vancouver (after whom the Canadian city of Vancouver is named), pilfered monkey puzzle seeds (el piñón araucano) from the banquet laid on by the governor of Chile and returned to England with germinated seedlings in 1792. The rest, as they say, is history.