Calling all Gig Harbor Historians!
Monkey see, monkey do…Monkey Tree, what’s the story with you? Anybody walking along the downtown waterfront area of Gig Harbor is sure to have seen our very fun and very unusual Monkey Tree. The tree sits right along the sidewalk of Gig Harbor’s downtown, and is like no other tree I’ve ever seen in Gig Harbor. If any of you have lived here longer than I, or somehow else know the story of this tree, I’d love to hear about it’s history. How old is it? How long has it been here? Where are Monkey Trees usually found? Are they really called Monkey Trees or have I always been calling it by a false name? Any thoughts or knowledge?
February 25th, 2008 at 5:41 pm
I grew up in England and remember my grandmother had one of these trees in her front yard. We called it a Monkey Tree also - I always thought it was because the limbs look like monkey tails. It was the only one I had ever seen - this is the second!
February 25th, 2008 at 8:50 pm
We called it a Monkey Tree in Idaho where I grew up.
February 25th, 2008 at 11:50 pm
We love that tree!
It is actually a Monkey Tree, or more actually a Monkey Puzzle Tree. Check this site out for more information on the species and its uses in the PNW. Essence of Monkey Tree
When it got here, I don’t know; the only ones I have seen bigger than that one are currently in a front yard in Point Defiance.
February 26th, 2008 at 11:31 am
Thanks for the info! I can’t believe I can’t picture the ones at Pt Defiance. I used to run their 6 days a week when I lived in Tacoma…I’ll have to go back and look for them.
February 26th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
Have always wondered about this tree every time we’ve been in Gig Harbor; found the following online regarding its name:
he 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 garden 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 (Mitchell 1996).