No riddle: monkey puzzle tree is just ugly

I HAVE a neighbour with a large garden.

She dragged me into it the other day, although I had been comfortably ensconced in the house, because she wanted to show me the new tree she had planted since my last visit.

And there it was, right in the middle of a lawn. And there I was, in an embarrassing situation. She was expecting my admiration, but it was a monkey-puzzle tree, and I hate them. They have bark like the skin of an elderly elephant, leaves that look like the scales of a venomous reptile, and the shape of the tree is disturbingly extra-terrestrial. Some trees are more beautiful than others, but the monkey puzzle is the only one that is invariably ugly.