WORLD CELEBRITY

Dracaena draco, the Canary Islands Dragon Tree or Drago is a subtropical Dragon Tree native to the Canary Islands, Cape Verde, Madeira, Azores, and locally in western Morocco. This tree is the natural symbol of the island of Tenerife (Canary Islands, Spain), together with the Fringilla teydea.

The tree is characterised by a single or multiple trunk growing up to 12 m tall (rarely more), with a dense umbrella-shaped canopy of thick leaves. It grows slowly, requiring about ten years to reach 1 m tall. Young trees remain with only a single stem; branching occurs when the tree flowers, when two side shoots at the base of the flower panicle continue the growth as a fork in the stem. Being monocotyledonous, Dracaena draco does not display annual rings and age can only be estimated by the number of branch forking occurrences (indicating the number of flowering episodes) and measuring the frequency of flowering (less than annual). Some specimens are believed to be up to 650 years old; the oldest is growing at Icod de los Vinos in northwest Tenerife.

The recently discovered wild populations in western Morocco have been described as a separate subspecies, Dracaena draco subsp. ajgal. Some of the plants on Gran Canaria are referred to a separate species Dracaena tamaranae, which is more closely related to East African and Arabian Dracaena.

When the bark or leaves are cut it secretes a reddish resin, one of the sources of the substance known as Dragon’s blood.