Could Scotland be answer for the monkey puzzle?
ITS plant life is most commonly typified by thistles and heather.
But now Scotland is taking on a prickly new cultivation – in the shape of monkey puzzle trees.
The country could play a key role in saving the evergreen from extinction after thousands of seeds were flown in from South America to be nurtured.
The conifers have been around for more than 200million years, but are threatened in their native Chile by wildfires, grazing livestock and overharvesting of their edible seeds.
External pressures such as climate change have seen their populations dwindle. The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE) has flown thousands of seeds from Chile to help safeguard their genetic diversity.
More than 700 Andean monkey puzzle seedlings are being grown in a glasshouse, with plans for the plants to be distributed to sites in the UK. The species thrives in the British climate, to which it was introduced by Perthshire botanist Archibald Menzies in Victorian times.
Martin Gardner, co-ordinator of the International Conifer Conservation Programme at RBGE, said: ‘They were around with the dinosaurs and are virtually unchanged today.
‘But now they are restricted to just a relatively small area.
‘Because the monkey puzzle is so threatened, the trees we are growing will act as a source of material that could be used to help reintroduce them back in to the wild.’
More than 150 of the trees will go to Benmore Botanic Garden near Dunoon, Argyll, which Mr Gardner says will become the largest forest of monkey puzzles in cultivation.
He added: ‘Monkey puzzles love the Scottish climate. They grow incredibly well here.’