In the gardening circles in which I move, I get a fair amount of stick for my love of conifers. A few weeks ago, I got "Ugh, I hate conifers. They're so ugly"! And this really surprises me. What is the issue with conifers? I know there are problems with the Leylandii thugs, but other conifers are available. Metasequoia glyptostroboides is a breathtakingly majestic tree at any size. The colour of Picea pungens, the blue spruce, is exquisite. And an awful lot of people invite one into their homes in December!
And one of my favourites is Araucaria araucana, the monkey puzzle tree. Love it. Love, love, love it. So imagine my distress! Yolanda at Bliss hates them with a passion!! This is my attempt to redress the balance, and counter the albeit laugh-out-loud criticism of such a noble tree.
Is there another tree so perfectly symmetrical? From a distance they look like they're made of dark green pipe cleaners.
And as well as these wiry green pyramids, there are the trees that have lost their lower branches, and now look like giant chimney brushes!
These particular varieties were used to great effect in the ground-breaking TV series "Walking With Dinosaurs":
And as you will see, it is perfectly possible to hug a monkey puzzle tree if it is one of the bare-trunked varieties. And I did hug the one above, at Chatsworth House. It's not as nice to hug as a Sequoiadendron giganteum, but it suffices.
Now, the leaves - they're like stroking a shark. If you stroke from trunk to tip, they're fine. If you stroke the other way, you can say goodbye to the palms of your hands. But does that make them any less beautiful?
Hell no. This was my desktop image for quite some time. My mind boggles at the mathematical calculations that would be needed to replicate this artificially. Isn't it wonderful though?
So I won't hear a bad word against monkey puzzle trees. They have held on for millions of years, so they must be doing something right. Members of the Araucaria genus provided a decent high-energy food source for high-browsing sauropods like Brachiosaurus. and since these high-browsers were the largest land animals ever to have existed, that's quite an achievement on the part of these trees.
I adore conifers. My Gondwanan gymnosperm fetish compels me to furnish Jurassic Park with conifers. So if any of you have an Araucaria araucana that you don't want, please dig it up and send it to me. It will be very happy in my garden!
And one of my favourites is Araucaria araucana, the monkey puzzle tree. Love it. Love, love, love it. So imagine my distress! Yolanda at Bliss hates them with a passion!! This is my attempt to redress the balance, and counter the albeit laugh-out-loud criticism of such a noble tree.
Is there another tree so perfectly symmetrical? From a distance they look like they're made of dark green pipe cleaners.
And as well as these wiry green pyramids, there are the trees that have lost their lower branches, and now look like giant chimney brushes!
These particular varieties were used to great effect in the ground-breaking TV series "Walking With Dinosaurs":
And as you will see, it is perfectly possible to hug a monkey puzzle tree if it is one of the bare-trunked varieties. And I did hug the one above, at Chatsworth House. It's not as nice to hug as a Sequoiadendron giganteum, but it suffices.
Now, the leaves - they're like stroking a shark. If you stroke from trunk to tip, they're fine. If you stroke the other way, you can say goodbye to the palms of your hands. But does that make them any less beautiful?
Hell no. This was my desktop image for quite some time. My mind boggles at the mathematical calculations that would be needed to replicate this artificially. Isn't it wonderful though?
So I won't hear a bad word against monkey puzzle trees. They have held on for millions of years, so they must be doing something right. Members of the Araucaria genus provided a decent high-energy food source for high-browsing sauropods like Brachiosaurus. and since these high-browsers were the largest land animals ever to have existed, that's quite an achievement on the part of these trees.
I adore conifers. My Gondwanan gymnosperm fetish compels me to furnish Jurassic Park with conifers. So if any of you have an Araucaria araucana that you don't want, please dig it up and send it to me. It will be very happy in my garden!
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