Dragon trees


The Canary dragon tree, Dracaena draco, is native to Macaronesia (Canary Islands, Madeira and Porto Santo, Cape Verde) as Dracaena draco subspecies draco, and to Morocco as subsp. ajgal. Plants growing in the Azores were introduced there.

Botanically, it is currently classified (by the Angiosperm Phyllogeny Group) as being part of the family Ruscaceae - although it has also been listed in the Dracaenaceae, Laxmanniaceae, Agavaceae and Liliaceae.

Initially single stemmed, the plant's trunk forks after flowering at age 10+years. The forking continues, to produce the dramatic fractal branching and umbrella-like outlines of old trees. Because there are no annual rings, it is not possible to accurately ascertain the age of trees - in the past some of the large specimens were thought to be considerably older than they in fact were. It is possible that the famously large and somewhat senescent specimen at Icod de los Vinos in Tenerife is between 350 and 700 years old.

Trees can reach a height of 12-15m, but a specimen in Tenerife (Orotava) reached 21-23m before being blown down in a storm in 1867-68, when it was supposedly aged 6000 years.

The flowers are small and greenish-white or pinkish-white, but in large branching clusters; they are followed by orange-red berries containing a white seed.

Not all of the plants on Gran Canaria are Dracaena draco - some are the island endemic Dracaena tamaranae, which is more closely related to East African and Arabian Dracaena species.

Some of the D. draco plants on Tenerife are truly wild, but it is said that those now growing on La Palma and most of those on Gran Canaria were originally planted. Gran Canaria has one wild plant at San Nicolás de Tolentino in the Barrance de Pino Gordo, and two subspontaneous plants at Meleguinas and at Santa Brígida in the Barrance Alonso. On Tenerife there are 25 populations, with c.445 plants in Anaga, c.162 plants at Adeje and c.84 in Teno, plus 2 at Guía de Isora, and individuals at Barranco de Badajoz, Güímar and Barranco de Niágara.

There is a single specimen on La Gomera, above Alajeró (and known as the Drago de Agalán or Drago de Magaña), which though large and old, is believed to have been planted. However, the name of the hamlet of El Drago to the west may indicate the presence of more native trees in the area in the historic past. Sadly the Gomeran tree has been enclosed by a fence since the late 1990s, though whether this is to keep the public out or the tree in, is hard to say.

Plants found in inaccessible areas of Morocco (at Jbel Imzi and Adad Medni in the western Anti-Atlas Mountains), in 1996, have been separated as subsp. ajgal (the local name). The population of the Moroccan subspecies, despite being unknown to the outside world until 12 years ago, considerably outnumbers the total islands' population of the type subspecies. Some of the African trees are reportedly up to 20m tall.

Once fairly abundant, Dracaena in Macaronesia is in decline. The wild population in Madeira is now down to a small handful. Problems include slow growth, lack of regeneration, and the vulnerability of old, large specimens to storm damage. Dracaena draco subsp. draco is classified as Vulnerable, and D. tamaranae is classified as Critically Endangered, with just 76 individuals surviving, of which only 12 are adult.

Several websites state that the Canary Island dragon tree seed only germinated after it had passed through the digestive system of a large, flightless, dodo-like pigeon - a bird which is now extinct, hence the current rarity of the trees. I can find no published evidence of the past existence of any large flightless bird in the Canary Islands, and it would appear the myth is based on the supposed symbiosis between actual dodo and the tree Sideroxylon grandiflorum (tambalacoque) both of which were entirely confined to the island of Maurtitius in the Indian Ocean.

Occasional dragon trees never flower, and so never branch, producing rather bizarre 'skyrocket' forms - see the Gibraltar Natural History Society's picture of the two types in the Garrison Library Gardens. The oldest dragon tree in Gibraltar's Alameda Botanical Gardens is believed to be around 300 years old.

Historically, the red resin from the plant was known as dragon's blood and used in magic and medicine as well as for a violin varnish and for embalming. 7,4-dihydroxy-5-methoxyflavylium (dracoflavylium) has been identified as the major red colorant in samples of the resin. Another source of dragon's blood was the closely related Dracaena cinnabari from Soqotra island in the Arabian channel.

Dragon trees on La Palma

 The older dragon trees on La Palma have a more upright, multiple-branched form than do those on Tenerife. This is said to be because La Palman farmers pruned the branches in order to feed their livestock - however the species is surrounded by so much mythology it is hard to judge the reliability of this suggestion.

There are a number of small colonies on the northwest, northeast and east of the island.

north
west		 Las Tricias probably the island's
largest colony		 28°47'21.12"N
17°58'28.51"W
north La Tablada I've not seen these, but
there appear to be several
around the village		 28°50'3.19"N
17°52'37.62"W
north
east		 La Tosca more than a dozen trees
around the small hamlet		 28°49'42.46"N
17°48'57.66"W
east Zumacal a colony of 4 large trees,
plus several younger ones		 28°39'8.54"N
17°46'10.59"W
Zumacal two to the W 28°39'4.80"N
17°46'12.70"W,
Zumacal one to the S 28°39'2.27"N
17°46'10.21"W,
Zumacal and one to the NE 28°39'16.51"N
17°46'6.83"W.
east Gemelos (on the road to San Isidro) A pair of trees growing very close together 28°38'53.85"N
17°47'15.06"W.
east San Antonio A single tree just SW
of the San Antonio crossroads		 28°38'42.68"N
17°46'4.44"W.




Lance Chilton and Marengo 2008

Marengo, 17 Bernard Crescent, HUNSTANTON PE36 6ER, England
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