Puzzled

Here are some shadows that I found in Golden Acre Park, Leeds, today:

They are shadows from a Monkey-Puzzle Tree , Araucaria Araucana, a native of Chile and Argentina and so called because it was thought that it would be tricky for a monkey to climb. And so it would, because the branches are very, very spiky:

Some people love them - majestic, characterful - some hate them - gloomy, Victorian! I love them - they are so strange and remind me of a Victorian country house in the Lake District where we used to stay. They were imported into Britain from the eighteenth century onwards as part of people's unusual plant collections.

The Yorkshire seaside town of Whitby is well-known for jet, the black shiny gemstone so beloved of Victorians, and still made into jewellery today.

And what is jet? Jet is fossilised monkey-puzzle trees.