Mazo Farmer's Market

Mazo has a farmer's market. Most of the stalls sell fruit and veg, but there are a few selling things like organic bread, flowers, or hand-made biscuits. This week there's a second-hand stall run by school kids, raising money for the end-of-school-year trip.


My son's favourite stall crushes sugar cane through a small mangle, and sells the juice. You can had a tumbler of cane juice, orange juice or mixed juice for €2. But my favourite is a mojito: rum with cane juice, lemon and mint. It's seriously yummy at €4, and the good news for drivers is that they do take-aways. (Do NOT have one before driving. It must be equivalent to a British triple measure.) Opening times are Saturday from 3 pm to 7 pm, and Sunday, 9 am to 1 pm.

Upstairs you'll find a craft market - lots of embroideries, and a few other things. It's a good place to get one-of-a-kind souvenirs. They open longer hours than the food market: Monday- Friday, 10 am - 2 pm and 3 pm - 6 pm, Saturdays, 11 am - 6 pm and Sundays, 10 am - 2 pm.

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Dragon trees

The latin name is Dracaena draco Although they grow anything up to 12 metres tall, botanically, dragon trees aren't trees. They don't have annual rings, for one thing. Actually, they're classified in the same order (Asparagales) as garlic and asparagus, although they look nothing like each other. In fact, dragon trees look mostly like broccoli on steroids.

They grow throughout the Canary Islands, and also in Cape Verde, the Azores, Maderia, and western Morocco.

Because they don't have annual rings, it's hard to tell their age. The trunk branches every time they flower, which isn't every year. So you can tell how often a trees has flowered, and make an educated guess at its age that way. The tree in the photo has flowered just twice. The oldest ones seem to be about 650 years old.

The resin is reddish. In ancient Roman times, people used to dry it and sell it to alchemists as dragon blood. It must have fetched a packet.

The Canary Islands used to have a large, flightless bird, something like a Dodo. This bird ate dragon tree fruits, so the seeds evolved to have a hard protective covering to survive the bird's digestive tract. Now that the bird is extinct, this covering makes it had for the seed to germinate. The north of La Palma is one of the few places where the trees are reproducing naturally. In other places they put the seeds in an acid bath for a few hours (much like the inside of a bird) to remove the hard coating before planting the seed.

This one lives in Las Tricias, Garafía.

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