I grow monkey puzzles from seeds I collect, the source being nearby. But I don't want to mention the secret location - though I've mentioned the location before - because I don't want to have to fight people, like Italians who go in for the chestnuts, if they were ever to discover that you can eat the monkey puzzle nuts, which are the monkey puzzle seeds that I grow, which I already knew you can eat, which the squirrels like, which I've tried a little bit raw, but which I haven't eaten in any substantial way since I grow them instead.
Dean is right about the seed "cones" (for both the bunya bunya and the monkey puzzle). They're huge and explode on falling to earth. Ka-BOOM ka-BLOOEY!!! BUNYA BUNYA!!!
Someone told me once that he thought spiders really like housing in monkey puzzles. Don't know about that. But I could see it being true. The tree dost appear to don the spidery limbs - and like attracts like.
There are quite a few good specimen monkey puzzles in southwestern British Columbia. You can find them in just about every neighbourhood, some which have reached the seed producing age (for which is required male and female, with the very rare exceptions of "self-fertile" ones). Lots of monkey puzzles especially in Victoria, which produce viable seed. There's a place on the island that has one of North America's largest monkey puzzles. Ronning Garden, in Holberg. That site says, "World’s Tallest Monkey Tree".
Uhhhhmmmmm, I don't know about that...taller than the ones in Chile?
Something I like about them is that from their very inception out of the seed shell, their "leaves" are every bit as sharp and pointy as when they are adults - which is very sharp and very pointy.
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