How the Monkey Puzzle Tree found its way to Elizabeth Park was, well, a puzzle.

“It’s been in our greenhouse for 30 years; we have no idea when it came here. Nobody has any history,” Kathy Kraczkowsky, director of park operations of the Elizabeth Park Conservancy, said Thursday.

Monkey Puzzle Trees are native to Chile and got their moniker because their spiny branches led an English barrister in the 1800s to proclaim that climbing them would puzzle a monkey.

So, despite the mystery surrounding this particular tree at Elizabeth Park, one thing was certain: It needed to find a new home.

The park’s greenhouses, where the tree lived as it can’t survive Connecticut winters, are being renovated, Kraczkowsky said, and the tree wouldn’t fit in the new structure once the project is completed.

Planting it outside wasn’t an option.

“It’s not indigenous to this country,” Kraczkowsky said. “This tree couldn’t survive [north] of New Jersey. … If we had a cold winter, it would die.”

So Kraczkowsky reached out to city employee Charmaine Craig, Hartford’s “Tree Lady,” a few weeks ago to help solve the, uh, puzzle on what to do with the Monkey Puzzle Tree.

“Kathy called me and told me that this wonderful tree here that needs a new home, and I started racking my brain,” Craig said.

Her first thought was Prince Tech, which has a high ceiling that could accommodate the 12-foot tree.

“But that didn’t work out,” she said.

Craig then spoke to some people at Hartford City Hall about possibly moving the tree to the atrium.

“But it just seemed like a desolate place for the new home,” Craig said.

Then Craig had an epiphany: She lives across the street from the Environmental Sciences Magnet School at Mary Hooker in Hartford, which has a two-story vivarium that houses some 15 trees.

“I went, ‘Bingo!’” Craig said. “I said that’s the home, and I can keep it close to me. … I came over here and looked at it and fell in love.”

Craig got in touch with Molly Deegan, a resident scientist at the K-8 school, who readily accepted the offer of the tree.

“It’s fantastic,” Deegan said. “I’m really excited for both myself and my own interest in plants, but also the ability to use it as a teaching tool for my students to compare and contrast plant adaptations and the amazing ways that plants are adaptable.”

Four Department of Public Works employees, along with city forester Heather Dionne, moved the tree 3 1/2 miles from Elizabeth Park to the school on Thursday morning.

The final puzzle was to figure out how to fit the tree — unwrapped — through the school’s 8-foot doors while taking care not to spike oneself on the tree’s spindles.

But through some good old-fashioned ingenuity, the tree — which can live up to 1,000 years — found its way to the vivarium.

Deegan said the tree, which was scorched a bit from having lived in the Elizabeth Park greenhouse, will have a happy home in the temperature-controlled room.

“The vivarium is basically a tropical greenhouse with all sorts of plants from all over the world,” Deegan said, adding that the school’s students will benefit tremendously with the new addition. “This is a really great opportunity to get a really special specimen that would be hard to get anywhere else. … This is a great addition to the collection and for students to compare and contrast what grows outside in our Connecticut landscape to what grows all over the world in different kinds of landscapes.”

Monkey Puzzle Trees, Deegan said, are prehistoric and are believed to have survived the time of the dinosaurs because their spiky branches aren’t all that appetizing.

“That’s why it has those sharp, spiny leaves,” she said. “I believe it’s a living fossil like the ginkgo biloba trees. … It existed before the continents divided, which is a really cool way of thinking about how old and wise plants are.”

And Deegan said she doesn’t believe the students will consider the tree’s name as a challenge to accept in terms of climbing it.

“I think the sharp spines will protect it from dinosaurs and little children who are very curious,” she said with a laugh.