IN CALIFORNIA 49 



ground to a height of forty or fifty feet. The 

 branches and leaves which spread like little wings 

 from the stems are so dense it looks like a hard 

 tree to climb, and by one of those curious twists 

 which make popular nomenclature so unreliable, it 

 is often called the monkey-puzzle tree, because of 

 the supposed problem it offers the monkeys to 

 thread its intricate interior. In point of fact, how- 

 ever, this name belongs to our third species, Arau- 

 caria imbricata, a native of the Chilean forests, a 

 more open tree with snakey-looking branches, also 

 planted quite extensively in California. It may 

 puzzle the monkeys to climb it, for its leaves are 

 exceedingly prickly, but I have been told the real 

 puzzle is furnished by the tight, compact cones al- 

 most as big as a man's head. The monkeys' puzzle 

 is to get these open in order to extract the seeds 

 which are very delectable to the simian palate. 

 The cones of all these Araucarias, in fact, contain 

 edible seeds, and this led to the introduction of the 

 Chilean species into cultivation in England. It 

 seems that during Vancouver's famous exploring 

 voyage around the world, and at a dinner given in 

 Valparaiso to the explorers, some of the nuts of 

 Araucaria imbricata were served. With the Van- 

 couver party was the botanist, Archibald Menzies, 



