The Monkey-puzzle Araucaria auracana: Jurassic biodiversity in the Doncaster region
C.A. Howes
The so-called Monkey-puzzle or Chile Pine of the genus Araucaria evolved during the Jurassic period around 150 million years ago. Their tough spiny foliage likely to have been a defence against herbivorous dinosaurs rather than an anticipated defence against future monkey-business (Tudge, 2005). Primates didn’t evolve until the Eocene, some 94 million years later, or more particularly the New-World monkeys didn’t arrive on scene until the Oligocene at least 10 million years later still.
The tree’s native habitat is the lower slopes of the Chilean and Argentine south-central Andes, between approximately 1,000 m (3,300 ft) and 1,700 m (5,600 ft). In the Chilean Coastal Range, A. araucana can be found as far south as Villa Las Araucarias (latitude 38° 30′ S) at an altitude of 640 m.
Juvenile trees exhibit a broadly pyramidal or conical habit, which naturally develops into the distinctive umbrella form of mature specimens as the tree ages. It prefers well-drained, slightly acidic, volcanic soil, but will tolerate almost any soil type provided it drains well.
This striking tree was first introduced to Britain by the botanist and plant-hunter Archibald Menzies after an expedition to Chile in 1791. The story is that while dining with the Viceroy of Chilie, Menzies pocketed some of the kernels of the nuts that were offered for dessert, and succeeded in germinating them in a frame on his ship. The seedlings were subsequently donated to Kew, where they proved to be the previously unrecorded ‘Chile Pine’ (Mabey, 1996).
Greater quantities of seed were brought back in the nineteenth century by the celebrated plant hunter William Lobb on behalf of the Exeter-based nurseries run by the Veitch family, through which the tree became a popular and conspicuous feature of grand Victorian gardens (Mitchell, 1996). It is now becoming realised that 19th century forestry entrepreneurs planted more seed into country estates than was originally realised, the resultant trees now emerging from obscurity as impressively maturing giants in forests and plantations across the UK (Mabey, 1996).
The popular trend of Edwardian gardeners introducing solitary, set piece, examples into suburban gardens, resulted, in the fullness of time, in many of these domestic novelties becoming sexually mature, producing male and female cones and viable seed. In the new millennium, Don Grant (YNU VC63 plant recorder) noticed this burgeoning phenomenon and would tour around West Yorkshire with his bus pass, recording his finds. On spotting a candidate tree he would alight from his subsidised transport, introduce himself to the householder and cadge a cone-bearing twig as evidence. These bulky items were photocopied by a sympathetic librarian in his local library and an archive was formed. Framed examples are in the possession of several interested naturalists including Paul and Joyce Simmons, as can be seen in their down-stairs lavatory.
Notable examples in the Doncaster region
Referring to its Yorkshire distribution and status Wilmore (2000) regarded it as “a scattered and occasional ornamental tree of parklands and gardens” Lindholme Hall, Brodsworth Park and St Catherine’s Hall being Doncaster examples.
Lindholme Hall
Three Monkey-puzzles were planted on the raised lawn on the south-facing aspect of Lindholme Hall (SE7006). On 12 August 2026 their locations were plotted and girths measured as follows.
- The western specimen of unknown sex, is located 97ft south of the Hall’s west wing and 52ft west of the southern tree. Its girth, in the region of 8ft*.
- The eastern specimen, a female, is located 33ft south of the east wing and has a girth at chest height of 6ft 11inches.
- The southern specimen, a male, is 49ft south of the eastern specimen, 82ft from the east wing and has a girth at chest height of 8ft 5inches. It is also characterised by having 10 substantial epicormic growths emerging from around the base of its trunk. An old and healing scar with a diameter if 1ft 6inches at the base of the trunk, indicates the removal of a substantial epicormic growth some years ago.
Encouraged by Joyce Payne’s appeal for information about venerable Monkey-puzzles Araucaria auracana in Yorkshire (YNU Bulletin (1997) 28: 1-5), interest was shown in these fine specimens during the YNU visit to Lindholme Moor (VC63) 1 July 2000. These are some of the largest specimens in the Doncaster region and produce viable seed from their female cones.
Local folklore speculates that their planting may have been an arboricultural ‘pun’ on behalf of Sir Thomas Birkin Bt. who owned the estate for a period after 1907, Sir Thomas receiving local celebrity through reputedly having monkeys roaming freely around the hall (pers. comm. Martin Limbert).
The earliest image so far located, featuring any of the Lindholme Araucarias is a post card of the 1920’s based on a photograph taken by Edgar Leonard Scrivens. A copy of this postcard from the Peter Tuffrey Collection is Figure 5 on page 40 of Limbert, (2023). The photograph shows most of the southern frontage of the Hall and just within shot on the right hand (eastern) side of the image is half of the monkey-puzzle adjacent to the eastern wing of the building. Though the image only shows the western half of the tree, what is visible is a complete vertical section from its conical (pyramidal) crown to its characteristically curved lower branches almost touching the ground. This indicates a symmetrical, healthy, young to middle aged specimen.
The photograph in Rhodes (1988) (forming plate 2 facing page 18), was taken in 1966 by W.H. Gordon-Smith to illustrate a series of articles on Country Houses. Since the building is the important feature of the image, it only shows one of the three Araucaria trees which happens to be the specimen which features on the Scrivens postcard. By this time, some 40 years later, its now rather flattened crown towers above the roofline of the Hall. With the passage of time and growing in a relatively elevated situation and no doubt significantly above the local water-table, the tree is showing characteristics of ageing, its lower branches appearing stick-like, having lost their foliage and the once gracefully curving lower branches appear to be lost. Nicholson & Clapham (1975) suggest this is a characteristic of venerable specimens in eastern, low rainfall areas of Britain. The legend with the photograph usefully gives the date of the Hall as “built in 1849”. It also indicates the substrate on which the trees are growing as “… on an island of cultivated glacial moraine which rises through the peat”.
A third published photograph appears on page 47 of Limbert (2023). This is in colour and was taken by Joan Buckland. It features the south aspect of Lindholme Hall on a clear February day in 2023. This is the first to feature all three of the Lindholme Hall Araucarias. Interestingly the specimen which appears on the Scrivens and Gordon-Smith photographs, (closest to the Hall) seems to have developed a fuller, more substantial crown, though with the passing of approximately a century since the first photograph, it had lost most of its lower branches. The remaining two Araucarias appear to be very substantial trees with more globular crowns.
Formerly, in the UK, Monkey-puzzles self-seed very rarely (Mabey, 1996), Wilmore (2000) confirming that in Yorkshire the tree scarcely ever reproduces naturally. However, in the 2020’s at least three self-seeded saplings were found growing in the Birch dominated peatland of Lindholme Old Moor (formerly Jack’s Piece), these being one on the eastern side of the main Riding, one in the sector between the two ridings before the dipwell riding and the most distant specimen on Skiddy’s Riding near Fison’s Drain (pers. comm. Louise Hill, Tim Prosser & Colin Howes).
The means by which seed was transferred from the parent trees on the south side of Lindholme Hall is not known. In Chile and Argentina certain native rodents and birds are known to disburse and bury (cache) Araucaria seeds, significant vectors being the Long-haired Grass-mouse Abrothrix longipillis and the Austral Parakeet Enicognathus ferrugineus.
On Lindholme, there appear to be two possible equivalent locally occurring vectors, the Grey Squirrel Sciurus carolinensis and the Eurasian Jay Garrulus glandarius.
Grey Squirrels typically bury harvested nuts within 10 to 30 meters and up to 50 meters from the parent tree, whereas Jays typically bury nuts within 50 to 100 meters but up to 500 meters from the parent trees. Since the distance from the parent Monkey-puzzle tree on the south lawn of Lindholme Hall to the sapling(s) on Lindholme Old Moor must vary from at least 400m to approximately 1000m, the vector is most likely to have been a Jay.
In 2026 the most westerly of the Monkey-puzzles was found to be dead and was felled by chain saw for reasons of public safety, and the cylindrical trunk cut into sections. In July Tim Prosser and Les Coe photographed the remaining stump and a selection of sections in an attempt to estimate the tree’s age by counting the number of visible annual growth rings.
Tim estimated the number to be approximately 153, indicating the tree was planted around 1873. This would be too early to justify the rather questionable anecdote relating to Sir Thomas Birkin, though it could tie in with the latest iteration of the Hall being built in 1849 (Limbert, 2023).
*The girth measurement (8ft 3inches) and trunk diameter (2ft 7inches) of the western tree was measured on 12 August 2026 from the top of its felled stump at 2ft 7inches. A crude lower estimate of its height (47ft) was based on the accumulated measurements of the felled log-able trunk sections.
Freshly exuding resin from the bark of the felled stump suggests that a ring of epicormic growths may eventually emerge around the cut edge, giving rise to form of coppice regeneration.
Some of the sections showed evidence of wood-boring beetles having utilised the timber, Les Coe photographing a larval chamber several inches long and still filled with frass.
The wound of what must have been a substantial epicormic limb which had been cut from the base of the southern tree, had been attacked by a number of much smaller timber beetles, the size of Anobium punctatum furniture beetles. Resin seeping from around the old wound had attracted a hymenopteran (? A mining bee).
In the spinous scale-like leaves of lower branches, there was evidence of numerous spider webs, indicating a unique spider habitat. A Philodromous spider (a running Crab Spider) and various Linyphia, Lephtyphantes, Araneus, Zygiella, and Meta, were observed and offer an interesting study.
Brodsworth Hall (SE5007)
Pretty (2001) illustrates the two magnificent specimens in the formal gardens at Brodsworth Hall (English Heritage) (SE/5007), the gardens are mid19th century, established around the time the hall was built 1861 to 1863. The female tree (on the left, looking from the hall) has a trunk girth of 1.995 metres (6ft 6½ inches), a height of 14.3 meters and a branch spread of 6.5 metres.
St Catherine’s Hall (SE5670 0014)
A mature specimen is located adjacent to the frontage of St Catherine’s Hall (now a hospital belonging to Doncaster Health Trust) (SE/5600). This is the remaining one of a pair, the other blew down in gales a few years ago (possibly the series of storms during the winter of 2013-14). Sadly, no one thought to do a ring count though it is likely to date from the building of the hall in 1839 (Anon,1997).
During a DNS survey 27 August 2025, the girth of the remaining tree, a male, located at (SE5670 0014) had a circumference at chest height of 5ft 7inches.
Conservation status
Evidently, Monkey-puzzle timber made good railway sleepers in their native lands, being resistant to rot due to their high resin content (Pretty, 2001). As a consequence, much of their stock was severely depleted during the development of the south American railway systems, depletion which continues through agricultural expansion, illegal logging and climate-change induced wild-fires. In 2013 it was listed as Endangered on the global IUCN Red List, highlighting the urgent need for protection and conservation efforts.
Viable seed from the Brodsworth cones have been sent to the Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh who have successfully propagated them and distributed the resultant seedlings to various forest restoration projects including their native Chile.
References
Anon. (1997) A history of St Catherine’s Hall. Doncaster Healthcare Trust.
Eversham, B.C. & Lynes, M. (1981) A Peat Moor Study: Hatfield Moors pt. 2. Habitats contd. Lapwing 14: 26-37.
Howes, C.A. (2002) YNU visit to Lindholme Moor (VC63) 1 July 2000. The Naturalist 127: 157-163
Limbert, M. (2023) Lindholme Houses. Thorne & Hatfield Moors Papers. 12: 30-47.
Mabey, R. (1996) Flora Britannica. Sinclair- Stevenson, London.
Mitchell, A. (1996) Trees of Britain. Collins, London.
Nicholson, B.E., & Clapham, A.R. (1975) The Oxford Book of Trees. Oxford University Press.
Payne, Joyce (1997) Venerable specimens of Araucaria auracana in Yorkshire. YNU Bulletin 28: 1-5.
Pretty, Edwin (2001) Notable and Venerable Trees in the Doncaster Borough. DMBC Planning Department. https://www.doncaster.gov.uk/services/planning/notable-and-venerable-trees
Rhodes, J.R. (1988) The Birds of the Doncaster District. DDOS.
Tudge, C. (2005) The Secret Life of Trees. Penguin books, London.
Wilmore, G.T.D. (2000) Alien Plants of Yorkshire. Yorkshire Naturalists’ Union.