During a long walk (12 kilometers) with a group of friends along the banks of the Meuse in a little town called Welle in the Province of Gelderland in the Netherlands, we spotted a strange tall pine tree with big fruits in a garden when we were walking on the dike. They had the size of a coconut.
The fruits consist of spherical seed cones that are first colored green and later brown. The seeds are edible and the Araucano Indians roasted them.
I was told that the tree is named Monkey Puzzle Tree. The English gave it that name because climbing the tree would have puzzled a monkey.
The tree is family to the Araucaria araucana tree and was the fashion in gardens of the 1970’s in the Netherlands. Planted as a small tree it could grow to be a giant tree of 40 meters high. The tree looks like a prehistoric tree where the leaves were food for herbivore dinosaurs. The tree is a living fossil. About 180 million years ago it could have been found on the supercontinent Gondwana (Africa, South America and India) or the prehistoric southern hemisphere.
The Monkey Puzzle Trees are still growing in Chile and Argentina. The seeds are an important source of food for the locals. These trees have also been one of the most important types of wood, but are now rare. They are hardy on European soils.
Listen to the popular song "El Condor Pasa" sung by Chilean singer Oswaldo Gomez, better known as “El Indio Araucano.”
