PlantFiles Pictures: Monkey Puzzle Tree (Araucaria araucana), 1 by coastgarden

coastgarden wrote:
The look of the Monkey Puzzle Tree before we bought the house. By the time we bought the house, the tree had lost the healthy look of the lower branches, which were browning and straggled. We asked the homeowner about the condition of the tree, and he explained that the species does lose it's lower branches, the browning was nothing to worry about. After we bought and moved into the house, I wasn't convinced the lower limbs should be looking as unhealthy as they were, so in hopes of saving the tree, I arranged for the lower limbs to be cut off, leaving the healthy, green upper limbs.

To no avail, as over the years the branches continued to turn brown until up to the tip of the tree there was only brown, no green left anywhere. It was time then to pronounce the tree as having passed into the place of expired trees.

We bought the house in Nov 2002, the lower limbs were removed in 2003, the tree was pronounced dead when it had no green left in 2007, having withstood one of the strongest windstorms to hit our county. In 2008, we asked our neighbor with tree removal experience to take down the tree. He was able to cut off all the limbs along with the top of the tree before the chainsaw kickback accident ended his work, leaving the trunk of the majestic tree still standing. In 2010, I asked the county maintenance to complete the work of taking down the remaining trunk.

photo below is how the Monkey Puzzle Tree looked a few years before we bought the house.