Well it's definitely a South Seas Araucaria of some kind.

I somewhat take issue w/Tom's assertion that London "never gets warm enough for its liking". I'd say, seldom gets warm enough. NIPs are all over San Francisco even the coldest western parts of the city, and there are even a few in Eureka/Humboldt. Granted San Francisco at least, is sunnier than London, even with the infamous fog, but they surely have fewer CDDs than London and are colder overall seeming in summer with the constant wind, with London having 2 months with a high of 73F, but San Francisco maxing out at one month just at 70F, while Eureka maxes out at _64F_ for the entire year! No doubt NIP grows in parts of Tasmania, coastal Chile, etc. with similarly chilly summers.

Years ago on the first version of the Hardy Palms board, a guy named Imtiaz in London posted that during mild years central London barely goes below freezing. And that in fact a mango seedling, grown from a discarded pit, had reached a second story window. So seeing a NIP there doesn't surprise me at all. They can certainly tolerate cool winter weather as there is a fairly large one on Isole di Brissago in southern Switzerland. Of course the problem with London (and all of the British Isles to some degree) is they are far north enough that no amount of Gulf Stream can completely prevent freezes and they will have some cold winters. I saw a huge, beautiful Hoheria angustifolia at Kew in 1993 - imagine something like an Ilex vomitoria covered with showy, bright white mini-daisies - that was completely killed in 1996. Mildest places like Cork and Scilly have seen roughly -7C in the very coldest winters IIRC.

This post was edited by davidrt28 on Fri, Dec 27, 13 at 11:49

Definitely a NIP and also not too surprising to me either. They can definitely grow in a protected Z9 location, such as can be found in central London. Here we have an A. columnaris of similar size growing between buildings on campus in a protected spot. Outside of town they would be dead by November, but the microclimate allows them to make it - at least until we have another record winter like happened in the 1980s when nothing is spared.