HOME

Writing

Photos

La Palma

Site Map

Links

P12 Dragon Tree

The dragon tree, Dracaena draco, only grows in the Canary Islands, Madeira and North Africa. It's not a true tree at all, since it has no annual rings. In fact it's a distant relative of garlic. The tree flowers at irregular intervals, and after flowering, the tree branches, so this dragon tree has flowered just twice.

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.

After we had several magnificent sunsets in a row, I wanted a photo of a dragon tree silhouetted against the sunset. Since I live on the east of the island, I wasn't going to get one at home. So I went to Las Tricias. I started search for a suitable tree at midday, planning to return just before sunset. In the end, by the time I found a good one, the sun was already setting. This meant I had just a couple of minutes to set up my tripod on a 45 degree slope of volcanic gravel. After a good deal of swearing, I managed to get just two photos before the light went.

It's rather easy to kill dragon trees with over-watering. Last time I went to the reptile house in Chester zoo, they had a rotting stump labelled "dragon tree". Of course everything else in there probably needed the high humidity.

Print film (Fuji 100) and Yashica 230 camera.

Own this photo now

Medium size: 30 x 20 cm unframed	10€
Small size: 15 x 10 cm unframed	0.79€

If you have any questions or problems