Thread: Monkey Tree
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Old 22-05-2012, 05:10 PM
echinosum echinosum is offline
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First recorded activity by GardenBanter: Feb 2006
Location: Chalfont St Giles
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mogga View Post
The monkey puzzle tree ?
http://www.channel4.com/4food/recipe...le-nuts-recipe

Got any nuts on it?
They take about 30-40 years to get to fruiting stage, so at 7m its probably not quite there yet. Then there are male and female trees, and if you are fortunate, after 30-40 years, to discover you have a female, you need a male in the area to pollinate it. Then they take about 2 years to ripen, and as the cones are generally rather high up you need to collect them as they fall off. Apparently there are a few places around where people manage to collect them in England, eg, there's an avenue of them at Longleat. Strictly for people with large pieces of land and a very long lead time to contemplate. This is why it is so sad that they are now confined, in the wild, to relatively small areas of Chile and Argentina, as the forests do not regenerate very easily. The nuts used to be a staple food for the native people.