monkey puzzle

plural monkey puzzles · alternative monkeypuzzle · alternative monkey-puzzle

1. A large coniferous tree, Araucaria araucana, native to Chile.First known use 19th c.

   In the late afternoon, I went for a walk along a monkey puzzle-lined trail.

   2012, Lawrence Winkler, Orion's Cartwheel, Victoria, BC: First Choice Books, →ISBN, page 178

   5 more examples

   They could see the small stone house where she used to live, with a monkey puzzle in front of it like a moustache.

   1951, Victor Sawdon Pritchett, Mr Beluncle, New York: The Modern Library, published 2005, page 88

   Even those, such as the vicar, who might by education have been supposed to put a less superstitious valuation upon her character and who were too tolerant to believe ill of the stage profession in itself and in the proper place, could not believe its transplantation into a village to be right or desirable. His sense of the fitness of things was as outraged as if a parishioner had suggested planting a monkey-puzzle over a mother's grave.

   1953, Rosemary Manning, Remaining a Stranger, page 67

   Harry had always wanted a cedar tree on the lawn, as there had been in his old home, but had done the best he could by planting a monkey-puzzle, which was said to be quicker growing.

   1958, Barbara Pym, A Glass of Blessings, Chapter Three

   While I am planting a monkey puzzle in the front garden in his memory, an old man stops and tells me he remembers, in his wild far-off youth, climbing a monkey puzzle for a bet – 'A great tall thing' – and being lacerated to pieces by the spikes.

   1984, Jilly Cooper, The Common Years, Meuthen, page 129

   Two days later I took it to the former manse, a solid grey stately Victorian building with a tall monkey puzzle tree on the lawn.

   2003, Alasdair Gray, “Miss Kincaid's Autumn”, in Every Short Story, Edinburgh: Canongate, published 2012, page 747

   Synonyms: Chile pine, Chilean pine, monkey puzzle tree, monkey tail tree