Three Vancouver Monkey Puzzle Trees

In other words, dinky. Where are the whoppers, show me those!!

 

Not the biggest in this thread so far, but here are some pictures from a different perspective... A nice Araucaria on Napier St. near Victoria Dr. We had to figure a way to climb it without spurs that wouldn't leave scars on us either.... We were asked to prune off the dead branches left from the shade of a Douglas-fir that had been removed a few years earlier, hence the bare patch on one side.

 

A puzzle, indeed.

I guess your ability to solve it demonstrated that you were not monkeys.

 

Here's another male couple, on Axton Road in Ferndale, WA, east a bit from the freeway.


Back to Vancouver, I just found this (single but happy) one on the northeast corner of 43rd and Selkirk.

 

Here's another happy single male in Vancouver, on the north side of Narvaez, east of Puget Dr.

 

This one isn't going to win any prizes either, but we seem to be documenting every Araucaria araucana we find in the city (if we can't get any champions for Ron, we can at least get numbers). This male on Cypress just north of Linden (google will show you where that is, and street view has a good photo of it right now) is nicely situated. This seems like a lot of cones. Hydrangea petiolaris is climbing the trunk.

 

It's almost a year since I've seen any new Araucaria araucana, and then today, roaming around on a Heritage Vancouver gardens tour, I saw four that were new to me. Again, I don't think these are going to impress Ron B, but I'm more easily impressed.

Here are two males in the Grandview-Woodland neighbourhood, this on the corner of 6th at Semlin,


and this a block away on Lakewood at 6th.


This one is only several blocks away in the Kensington-Cedar Cottage neighbourhood, on Templeton at 11th. I couldn't find any cones.


And one more on the edge of Shaughnessy, on 16th at Cypress. I thought I saw developing female cones, but I can't prove it.

 

Such a lot of monkeying around!

 

More monkeying around, looking for something to impress Ron. I was checking out some heritage trees identified by the BC Society of Landscape Architects in an unpublished book from 1984, hoping to find "the largest Monkey Puzzle tree in Vancouver" at Little Flower Academy School on Alexandra at 25th. There were originally two of these trees outside the nuns' residence. Neither is there now, all that having been replaced by a nice-looking library. Across the street, however, is a tree at York House School that one of the teachers we met on the street told us was planted in 1937. It looked great from a distance, when the houses blocked the bare trunk, but wasn't quite as good-looking up close.


Here are some more trees we found in private yards:
4611 Marguerite


Somerset and Avondale, no cones


A matched set in a yard just off the east side of Granville on the north side of Angus Drive.

 

Apparently the species has migrated north some thousands of miles.

 

Are you saying that I've posted so many that it might lead someone to think that it has naturalized here??

 

At this point one might wonder if there were any left in South America.

 

Three more male Araucaria araucana, and one that's male and female?

This male Monkey Puzzle is on 15th near Manitoba, near the edge of the Mt Pleasant Community Centre park.


This male tree is on church property on Napier at Semlin.


Here's a male tree on 49th near Elliott.


Now this one, at the cul-de-sac next to Tyee Elementary on 19th off Knight. Aren't these male and female cones? Is this allowed?

 

Is the large one still at the corner of Granville and Park (as I recall...)? As a kid, I remember noticing it everytime I rode by on the bus, it's on the east side of granville, north of the intersection. It is (was?) a big one, and as it was already fairly large in the late 70's/early 80's, it would be fairly venerable at this point.

UPDATE: google earth is your friend.....it appears to be gone, likely for a while as there is a brutally topped conifer in it's place. Too bad, would have been amongst the oldest in town.

 

I saw the last tree in posting #13 today, and it turns out it's another one with both male and female cones. I see that Wikipedia says

 

Nice example of a monoecious specimen there!

 

Hi all, I love monkey puzzles & just want to say how much I'm enjoying this thread! Thanks for the great pics :-)

 

With a dioecious specimen looking on.

 

LOL. A member of the Wednesday afternoon walking group. I drag these people around to look at trees. I wish there were that accompanying map to Trees of Vancouver that was being talked about several years ago.

 

Just one male tree to add to the collection, in the Kensington-Cedar Cottage neighbourhood on the 37th Avenue bikeway at Ross St. This one seems to be used as a Christmas tree.

 

How did they get those lights put up??

 

You mean when monkeys can't do it?

 

I called this tree at 447 W 19th between Cambie and Yukon a female in posting #13, posted in 2010, but it's another one that has cones of both sexes.

 

How could I not have posted this tree? A male.


And across Yukon on 12th, a female.


And on 14th at Yukon, a pair of males.

 

I would not have said this Araucaria araucana was a whopper, and indeed, thought it's almost across from the Vancouver East Cultural Centre, a place I've been often, I've never noticed it. But it's mentioned in a book called Sensational Vancouver, by Eve Lazarus, Anvil Press, Vancouver, 2014, and it's almost 100 years old. Lurancy Harris was one of the first two women police officers in Canada, hired by the Vancouver Police Department in 1911. She built the house at 1836 Venables and planted the tree in 1916. I'm not sure how Lazarus knows it's the very same tree, but that's what she says.


Not too far from there, on East 4th east of Woodland, is a pair of these trees, one a female and the other with no cones that I could find. That one, on the right in the third photo seems in much worse shape and has branches half the thickness of the other, but in the last photo, you can see that it still has some good colour. Would these be about the same age as the first one?