A small rock in the Atlantic: 18/01/09

Saturday, 24 January 2009

Almond Blossom

The north-west of the island is home to great many almond trees, and at this time of the year, they're all blossoming.

The trees in El Paso and Garafía are beautiful, but the best display of all is at Puntagorda. In fact Puntagorda hosts an annual almond blossom fiesta. The date varies -- the Town Hall sets it a couple of weeks in advance, to (hopefully) coincide with the best blossom. This year we've had a rather cold winter, so it's a little later than usual, on February 8th.
Almond blossom, La Palma, Canary Islands

Almond blossom, La Palma, Canary Islands

Labels: almond blossom, El Paso, fiesta, Garafía, La Palma, Puntagorda

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Wednesday, 21 January 2009

Pointsetia, Mazo, La Palma, Canary Islands

Pointsetias grow wild on La Palma, and they grew to an amazing size. This one is about ten feet high, and if you look closely, you can see it gets pruned back to under a foot every year. As you can see, they're much leggier than the ones they sell in the UK.

Cardon, Mazo, La Palma, Canary Islands

And these are another plant that grows wild on La Palma, called cardon in Spanish. It looks like a cactus, doesn't it? But actually, it's a close relative of pointsetias. For scientific types, they're in the same genus.

Yes really. You can see it when you look at the flowers. Not everybody realises that the red parts of a pointsetia aren't petals; they're red leaves. The flowers are the tiny yellow things inthe centre. And they're a very similar shape to the tiny dark-red flowers you get on cardon.