This morning the sky was blue, but not for long and the monkey puzzle tree would never have puzzled monkeys in its native Chile because there were no wild monkeys there.  It became a very popular specimen tree in large gardens during Victorian times and when a visitor was being shown the unusual tree which was recently introduced to a garden in Cornwall he remarked that the hard, very prickly leaves and their unusual overlapping arrangement on the branches “would be a puzzle for a monkey”.  So the Araucaria araucana  or Chile Pine became more well known as the Monkey Puzzle tree. In France it is called 'désespoir des singes' translated as the monkey's despair.