The Fire Monkey – 1956, 2016 The Fire Monkey is the most active and aggressive of the zodiac Monkeys. Naturally dominant, he automatically gravitates towards leadership roles and is competitive in whatever he is doing. He will need to be careful not to let this overwhelm him and turn into toxic jealousy. With his Fire energy, this agile, impulsive Monkey often leaps where angels fear to tread. This reckless behaviour sometimes turns out to not be to the Fire Monkey’s advantage. However, he is very creative, dynamic and has a particularly good talent at drawing people to him – this often helps him get out of scrapes. He’ll leap from tree to tree – whichever has the most fruit at the time – then find the quickest, cleverest escape before others get to him.
Monkey Puzzle Tree
The monkey puzzle was first used extensively to make railway sleepers for access to the coal fields, steel works, paper mills and ceramics industries that built up around Concepción, the port at the industrial heart of Chile where the tree originates. Later the timber was used for general carpentry, ladders, skis, piano interiors, oars, rulers and even aeroplanes. In the UK, the monkey puzzle became an archetypal Victorian park tree. The tree possibly gained its name because it would be a real puzzle for monkeys to climb up its whorls of spiny leaves, but there are no monkeys in Chile! The tree was alive 200 million years ago and rubbed shoulders with the dinosaurs. Its spine-like needles acted as protection from ancient grazing animals now long extinct. It can live for 1,000 years and grows to 50m high with a trunk diameter of over 3m. Its large seeds, pinones, take two years to mature. It grows on the slopes of rocky volcanoes and its bark is fire resistant, so ‘islands’ of trees can even survive lava flows.