I was visiting Centralia, Washington a few weeks ago and came across a really strange tree in someone's front yard. It was about 30 feet high, with a brown scaly trunk sort of like an artichoke. The many long "branches" all emanated from the single trunk and draped down and out again in an s-shape, forming a fairly solid overall cone-shaped evergreen tree that had small cones. Each branch was kind of an elongated hen-and-chicks, ending in a hen.

I'm sure I saw this same kind of tree years ago in northern California, and it caught my attention then, too. Seems to me someone told me it was a spruce.

Do you know what it is?

Sunny < in Sun Valley, Idaho

Reply to post by Sunny Grant, on April 12, 2001 at 15:10:12:

Without seeing it or having more detailed information, it sounds like you described the monkey puzzle tree, aka Chilean pine, Araucaria araucana. It grows to about 80 feet in its native Chile.

Reply to post by Russ Carlson, on April 12, 2001 at 15:10:12:

Russ, I found araucaria araucana on Internet and while the branches look very similar, they are upright. Branches on the weird tree were very long and all draped down (almost to the ground), forming a cone-shaped tree. Branch "leaves" looked very much like the araucaria, but loked rather succulent (although I did not touch them), thus my comparison to hen and chicks.
I would guess tree is humid-environment, since I saw it in San Francisco area and in Washington.
Seems to me "conifer" might be a good starting point, though, so I'm going to hunt around in that genera.

Reply to post by sunny grant, on April 13, 2001 at 11:52:48:

You may have seen the related tree from Australia shown at the link below. We have one on campus at Chico State, CA.

Reply to post by sunny grant, on April 13, 2001 at 11:52:48:

Perhaps it might be Japanese umbrella pine, Sciadopitys verticillata. This has drooping branches as it ages. The foliage is long and slender, though, not broad as you indicated.

Reply to post by Mark Goodwin, on April 13, 2001 at 17:14:24:

For anyone who was curious, the tree I referred to in my previous post is a Monkey Puzzle Tree.
Sunny