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By Nina J P Evans

Monday, May 06, 2013

The monkey puzzle tree

To quote Wikipedia: “The origin of the popular English name Monkey-puzzle derives from its early cultivation in Britain in about 1850, when the species was still very rare in gardens and not widely known. The proud owner of a young specimen at Pencarrow’s gardens near Bodmin in Cornwall was showing it to a group of friends, and one made the remark, ‘It would puzzle a monkey to climb that!’ as the species had no existing popular name, first ‘monkey puzzler,’ then ‘monkey puzzle’ stuck.”

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