A small rock in the Atlantic

Palmeran Sow Thistles (Sonchus palmensis)

Sow thistles look rather like a dandelion gone balistic. That is, the individual flowers look much like dandelions, but they're growing on a shrub anything up to 2 m (6 ft) tall. And now they're flowing all over the island, especially on the east, up to about 1,000 ft. Like so many other plants here, La Palma has a different species from everywhere else - Sonchus palmensis.

The local names are cerraja or lechuguilla.

Labels: Canary Island flora, La Palma, La Plama, Plants

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Dragon trees

One of the most exotic looking plants on La Palma are the 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.

One of the best places to see them is at Buracas, below the village of Las Tricias in Garafía. That's where I took this photo. There's another lovely group at La Tosca, in Barlovento, which you can see from a viewpoint on the main road from Barlovento village to Gallegos. And there's the famous twin dragon trees in Breña Alta.

Labels: Canaries, Canary Island flora, Canary islands, Dracaena draco, dragon tree, Garafia, La Palma, Plants

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Wild Peas

These are wild peas, Pisum sativum. They grow all over the island, and very pretty they are too. The flowers are edible, but I don't know if the peas themselves are. Certainly sweet peas are poisonous.

And a big thank you to everyone who took the time to answer the blog poll. I have a new one now. Are you coming to La Palma?

As always, if you don't fit any of the answers, feel free to leave a comment or send email.

Labels: Canary Island flora, Plants

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Twin Dragon Trees

Twin dragon trees (Dracaena draco), Breña Alta

These trees stand in Breña Alta, just off the minor road which winds over the central ridge to El Paso. They grow so close together that it's hard to tell where on trunk ends and the other begins.

Trunks of twin dragon trees, Breña Alta, La Palma

Trunks of twin dragon trees, Breña Alta, La Palma

Of course there's a legend associated with the trees. Two brothers lived nearby, and were very close, but they fell in love with the same gorgeous girl.

Oh dear. You can already tell that this doesn't have a happy ending, can't you?

The girl was fond of them both, but she had the sense not to keep them dangling. She chose one, and they were married, but as they walked to their new home in the dark, the spurned brother attacked. He killed the new bridegroom, and tried to rape his sister-in-law. She got to the kitchen knife first, so that was the end of him.

The new widow honoured them both by planting these two dragon trees. As the cuttings grew, she watered them and they grew tall from the fertile soil and her warm memories. They say that the brothers' blood still flows within their trunks and gives them life.

Twin dragon trees, Breña Alta, La Palma

Dragon trees are odd plants (see Dragon trees). Like most mature dragon trees, these are so full of nooks and crannies that they're more a micro-climate than a plant.

To see the trees, take the LP 123 between San Pedro and Monte de la Breña, and then the LP 301 up the hill. The trees are on the left, about 400 m from the junction. There's a tiny car park.
Twin dragon trees, Breña Alta, La Palma

Labels: Breña Alta, Canaries, Canary Island flora, Canary islands, Dracaena draco, dragon tree, La Palma, legends, Plants, twin dragon trees

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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.


Euphorbia pointsetia flowers	Euphorbia canariensis flowers

Who'd a thunk it, eh?

Labels: Euphorbia, Euphorbia canariensis, La Palma, Plants, pointsetia

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Wild Flowers of the Canary Islands

My father was a professional botanist, and he went into ecstasies over the wild flowers on La Palma. He was even fascinated by the roadside weeds. You see, because it's an island, the plants evolved in isolation, and in many cases the plant on La Palma is a different sub-species from the plant in neighbouring Tenerife. For example, echium wildipretti is a very tall cone of tiny flowers. The sub-species on La Palma has blue flowers, but the one on Tenerife has pink ones.

Anyone keen on plants will want a book to identify them. This was my father's favourite. The catch is that it was published in 1974 and it's out of print, but Amazon currently has a couple of second hand copies of this edition.

I'll be quite honest. If you buy through this link, I get a small commission, but it doesn't cost you any more.

Labels: books, flora, La Palma, La Plama, Plants, wildflowers

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Poppies

We have five different poppies on La Palma.

Papaver rhoeas The red poppy.

The Corn Poppy, Field Poppy, Flanders Poppy, or Red Poppy is easily the commonest. This is the poppy that mostly grows wild in fields.

Eschscholzia Californica , the California Poppy.

The next commonest comes from California, which has a similar climate.

Papaver somniferum, the opium poppy.

And then there's the opium poppies, which are presumably garden escapes.

Argemone mexicana Mexican prickly poppy.
And finally the prickly yellow poppies, which are an invasive species that come from Mexico. These aren't nearly as easy to find.

Labels: argemone, Canaries, Canary Island flora, Canary islands, Eschscholzia Californica, La Palma, Papaver rhoeas, Papaver somniferum, Plants, poppies, poppy

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The Palmeran Violet

This is the Palmeran Violet, Viola palmensis. It only grows on La Palma, above 1,900 m. (There's a similar violet on Tenerife, but it has smaller flowers). It used to be rare, but the island government has a program of replanting areas. You can find them beside the road from Santa Cruz to the Roque de los Muchachos well above the tree line.

Labels: Canaries, Canary Island flora, Canary islands, flora, La Palma, Plants, Viola palmensis, violet