Monkey Puzzle Tree (Araucaria araucana)

Monkey Puzzle Tree
Araucaria araucana

Monkey Puzzle Tree, about 90 + yrs old when we bought this house. We had to trim off the lower branches.

What a wonderful shot! Could you post some pictures of the tree in the daylight?

Is this the tree that turned brown at the top, you thought was dead, your husband thought was still alive? Was it brown before you chopped the lower branches? If it died after you removed its lower half, that could well be the reason. . .. . . .

So sad to have to report that our 90 + years old Monkey Puzzle Tree is down. End of an era for the tree, and many in the community who considered it a landmark, are sentimental about it's long history dating back to early 1900's were very disappointed, if not flat out heart broken, to see it come down.

It had been dying for several years, with the upper branches turning brown year by year until there was no green left at all on the tree. My husband was not inclined to have it taken down until he was convinced there was absolutely no hope of any part of coming back. Tiny green branch shoots tried valiantly to show the tree was still trying to live, but it was not enough.

When one of the branches broke off in one of our many windstorms, I could see the wood was dried and dead, and there was now danger as a homeowner of limbs falling and hurting people. I insisted that the limbs be taken off, and maybe a totem could be made of the standing tree trunk. A neighbor had just had totem installed at their home and I had a conversation with the totem carver about making a totem from the standing trunk of our tree. He took a wood sample and gave us the report that the wood was too soft to carve as totem. While it could be done, we might expect to see splits where eyes, nose, mouth had been carved into totems, making it more a caricature than a totem.

Another neighbor agreed to take off the limbs and try to bring it down for us. He had experience with tree cutting, tree removal. He shimmied up the tree, in his gear, cut all the limbs off, and managed to get the top of the trunk off before there was a chainsaw kickback accident. The chainsaw cut across the top of his hand, fortune with us all, did not sever any tendons or nerves. My husband took him to hospital where the wound was attended. It cost our neighbor employment $$ while he recovered, but the wound healed and he was back at his employment in due time.

For about 2-3 more years, the tall remaining trunk of the tree stood. I continually worried about it blowing down in our strong windstorms (ie, Storm 2007 gave us winds at 140-170 mph). Neighbor and others kept assuring me this tree wasn't coming down for anything. And it hasn't, it stood stoically against the windstorms.

But, it eventually had to come down. Over the decades as the tree grew, so did the community, and in time power lines went up forming a tripod effect against which if the tree fell would take out the power lines. No one was willing to try to bring it down for fear of it falling on power lines. Even though it no longer was in it's glory, the trunk continued to stand in memory of it's former glory, which I was later to learn satisfied enough of the elders in the community that it was still standing.

One day last week, the county maintenance work crew was out to our community cutting down brush and unwanted trees along the road side. I asked if they could take down what was left of our Monkey Puzzle Tree and they agreed to come back. Surprisingly, they did so by the next week. The process by which they took the trunk down was actually quite fascinating to watch. Within about an hour or less the trunk was down - an hour to take it down, after almost a century of growing. End of an era indeed.

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.

What a shame. You should plant a new one on the site, the young trees look like they have green cylindrical arms and I find them more entertaining even than the adults (they really look like alien lifeforms). Plus 90 years from now whomever is there will thank you for a great conversation piece, if you leave it empty or just plant a common poplar etc. it will be a great disappointment. When given a choice between planting the common or the weird, always go for the weird, keep life interesting!