A puzzle poem

Here's a puzzle of a poem. Can you guess what the tree is?

a

trophy tree 

named like a parlour game or sideshow

 ladies and gents, step up

and

 behold the fiercest known specimen in captivity!

see its armature of spiked steel leaves

its

 crocodilian hide, thick enough to withstand the volcanic fires

 that scorch its mountain home, its cone-grenades primed

to

detonate every three years – yes, you may touch

but have a care, madam, have a care!

its

seeds so scattered form the staple diet of the Pehuenche tribe

of the high Andes, for whom it is a totem

its

fossil forebears flourished for millennia in primordial forests

whose other scaly denizens it long outlived

and

for

all

we

know

 it

will

see

us

out

too

                                      Tom Scott