Monkey Puzzles and Muir

The Curious Chilean Trees Dotting Cityscapes

John Muir and I have several things in common: an interest in geology, shy good looks, and a passion for Chilean Monkey Puzzle trees (Araucaria aracana). He went so far as to visit them in their native home. I haven’t had that pleasure but have sought them out around Seattle since I was a child. Back then, whoever saw the tree first got to pinch the person they were with. I remember one that still grows at NE 65th Street and 25th Avenue NE that was sure to spark a pinch.

Muir was 73 years old when he traveled to South America in 1911 in search of the trees, which are, as the name indicates, native to Chile. After arriving in Brazil in late August and traveling up the Amazon for a month, he found his first species, Araucaria brazilensis, then took the train to Santiago de Chile, arriving on November 9. By November 20, he had reached his goal, a forest of monkey puzzle trees, in what is now Parque Nacional Talhuaca. In his journal he wrote: “A glorious and novel sight beyond all I had hoped for yet I had so long dreamed of it, it seemed familiar.” (If you want to know more about Muir’s travels in search of the Araucaria, I recommend Bruce Byer’s account of his trip tracking Muir in Chile.

This image comes from Bruce Byer’s descriptions.

Monkey puzzle trees have long been culturally important to the Indigenous people of Chile, specifically the Araucanos. They eat the nuts, which they harvest (called piñoneo) in fall from the ground (due to wind or parrots who drop them). Seeds are eaten raw, boiled, or toasted, incorporated into a fermented beverage, and ground into flour for bread and soup. In addition, “the Araucanos perceive the monkey-puzzle forest as an extended family, which they call lobpewen,” according to a 2004 article about the trees in Agriculture and Human Values.

About twenty species comprise the genus Araucaria. In the forest, they are tall trees with foliage down their entire trunks (unlike Douglas-firs). According to botanist Bob Hill, of the University of Adelaide, the trees “quite likely evolved at very high southern latitudes (e.g. there is a strong fossil record in Antarctica). At such high latitudes the sun is usually low in the sky, so having foliage down the sides of the tree is good for light capture.”

We do not know when monkey puzzle trees first began to appear in Seattle. Word on the horticultural street is that the trees arrived in Seattle because of the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition (also the rumored source of sturgeon I mentioned a couple of weeks ago). The story goes that seeds were passed out at the Chile booth. Again, we have no direct evidence of this though there was a booth representing Chile at the AYPE.

When I reached out to plant historian David Hedberg about a sister rumor, that the trees originated in Portland because of the Lewis and Clark Exposition, he told me there was no evidence to this claim. “I have wondered if Araucaria aracana seedlings were part of Seattle's Alaska Yukon expo…and that story got conflated with Portland…There's also a possible connection with John Muir's travels to Chile and then to Seattle,” he wrote to me.

Another widely spread story about the trees is that Archibald Menzies, the naturalist/surgeon on George Vancouver’s expedition that reached this region in 1792, was served a dessert with nuts from the trees at dinner in Valparaiso, Chile, in March 1795. Ever the able naturalist, Menzies pocketed the seeds instead of eating them, took them back to England, and planted them, which caused a sensation among plant lovers. Like the Seattle rumor, there is no direct evidence, such as a journal entry by Menzies, to corroborate the story (plus the nuts probably would have been cooked and not raw), but Menzies somehow did obtain seeds, which he planted successfully on the ship as it returned to England. Five (or maybe six) seedlings survived and were planted but not until the 1840s did they become popular with the public.

We do have a good idea though when monkey puzzle trees, or at least their predecessors appeared on Earth. Paleobotanists consider the family Araucariaceae one of the most ancestral conifer families. The earliest fossil evidence for Araucaria dates back to the Jurassic, 190 million years ago, from both the northern and southern hemispheres, though the plants are now native to only the south. Some of these early fossilized specimens closely resemble the modern species.

Even though the story of the arrival of monkey puzzle trees in Seattle is lost to the shrouds of mystery and time, we at least know for certain that when we see one of these lovely trees in our midst we are seeing a plant whose roots extend back to the time of the ammonites. And, you can still pinch someone if you see the trees first.