Popular trees pack in a lot of history

A COUPLE of weeks ago I wrote about Monkey Puzzle trees, mentioning that the man responsible for introducing them to these islands was Archibald Menzies, a Scottish medical doctor and botanist.

In fact the story is that in 1795 he was invited out to dinner by the Governor of Chile while his ship, aptly named Discovery, was docked in Valparaiso.

He was offered some unfamiliar nuts with his dessert and stealthily put a few of them in his pocket. He germinated them on the long sea voyage back to London and arrived home with five young Monkey Puzzles.