Monkey puzzle trees are quite interesting both because of their unusual crisscross branches and because they're conifers native to the Southern hemisphere. They're not the only conifers from the Southern Hemisphere, but conditions in the southern temperate zones have almost certainly shaped them into what they are now. In any case, as they're endangered, may they soon be unendangered.
It's theorized that they're spiky branches evolved as a defense against dinosaurs. Crazy to think about how aspects of such a long-ago world are still with us today.
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There are a number of monkey puzzle trees growing around Victoria so we see them fairly often - but they are strange looking nevertheless. I stopped to talk to a lady who was working in her garden a few weeks ago in front of her moderately tall Araucari tree. They'd planted it 20 years ago and she told me it would stop growing taller now that it was making seed and would only get thicker. I wasn't so sure she was right so I looked it up (wikipedia still good for a number of searches). There was no indication about limited height and photos there showed some extremely tall examples (there are much taller monkey puzzle trees in our neighborhood).
It got it's name from a time in England when they were still very rare when a man on seeing his first said, 'It would puzzle a monkey to try to climb that'.
I liked the dinosaur theory.
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