A monkey puzzle tree in London. (Photo by Flickr user markhillary)

After years of drawing and painting, studying drawing and painting, thinking about drawing and painting, and teaching drawing and painting, you’d think I’d have learned a thing or two about perception that would translate into how I go about the business of living. But what I don’t see continues to wreak havoc with what I do see.

Take the following example. The university where I teach has a beautiful arboretum. There are over 625 species and varieties of trees and bushes on our campus that are neatly labeled with plaques identifying their binomial name, as well as their colloquial name.

For almost 16 years, my regular walking route to the bus that takes me home after I’ve finished teaching has been through one of the loveliest gardens on campus. On nice spring days, I often take my students there to draw.

About a year ago, I suddenly noticed, smack in front of me, the weirdest-looking tree I’d ever seen in my life — Araucaria araucana, the plaque read, or “Monkey Puzzle.” The plaque indicated the tree was a native of Chile. It was about 12 feet tall and had lots of long, skinny and spiky branches that you wouldn’t want to touch. Although I’d never noticed the tree before, from that point on, whenever I went through the garden, I always stopped to look at the Monkey Puzzle.

It took me a long time to finally call Fred Soviero, the university horticulturalist and director of the arboretum, to ask him about the Monkey Puzzle and when it had been planted in the garden. I learned, to my sheepishness, that it had been there since 1991, when it was about 8 years old and only a few feet tall. It had been a gift from our former president, James Shuart. The plaque notwithstanding, I’d walked by this goofy-looking thing for 16 years without once seeing it. And to think I call myself an artist!

The name “Monkey Puzzle” apparently was given to the tree by the Brits, who thought it looked like something even a monkey wouldn’t be able to figure out how to climb. Fred told me that the Monkey Puzzle is dioecious, which means that it needs a mate to propagate. Since our Monkey Puzzle hasn’t yet born cones, and the shapes of the cones reveal its sex, we don’t know if our Monkey Puzzle is a boy or a girl. Whatever sex it is, it’s going to be a lonely Monkey Puzzle. Although the campus actually has one other Monkey Puzzle, he or she lives too far away for them to be friends.

Since I first noticed the Monkey Puzzle — why, I’ll never know — I walk by it every chance I get. I take other people over to see it all the time, and I ask my students if they’ve seen the Monkey Puzzle over by Mason Hall. I love its name, and I adore its looks.

For everything I’ve learned about how drawing and painting teach us to see the world afresh, most of my life continues to be controlled by the dull habit of not noticing things that are right in front of my eyes. In the case of the Monkey Puzzle, seeing it and loving it has been helped by knowing its name.