Tree of the week
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Good morning, again. We’ve had some spirited discussion, at times downright argumentative, on the blog this week. Maybe we can all agree that the tree at left -- a ‘dragon tree’ -- is a fine conversation piece. My tree-loving friend Pieter Severynen explains:(Canary Islands) Dragon Tree – Dracaena draco
‘Trees go in and out of fashion. The odd-looking but very impressive dragon tree was planted with some regularity in the ‘30s and ‘40s but nowadays only few specimens are seen here outside of botanical gardens.
‘It is really a big succulent that looks like an umbrella shaped multi-branched squat palm tree, very much at home in a cactus or succulent garden. The sturdy silvery gray trunk divides into a handful of short upward growing evenly spaced branches that are topped by full heads of 2-foot long sword-like leaves in dense rosettes. The tree grows very slowly to 20 feet tall and wide, and loves full sun and little to moderate water. Eventually clusters of greenish white flowers form at the ends of branches, followed by orange berries, but blooming cycles may be far apart. Flowering supposedly makes the stem branch.
‘Endemic to the Canary Islands and the Atlas mountains in Morocco, the island trees have become endangered because of over-harvesting of their red sap, called dragon’s blood. The Egyptians used it for embalming, Middle Age physicians prescribed it to cure various ailments, later it was used to stain wood to make it look like mahogany and 18th Century violin makers applied it to give their instruments a deep lustrous red color. Sap from related dragon trees such as D. ombet from NE Africa and D. cinnibari from Yemen is still collected for similar purposes.’
Thanks, Pieter. Email Pieter: plseve@earthlink.net
Comments? Insights?
Photo Credit: Palms4u.com