THE DRAGON-TREE OF OROTAVA[7]
(CANARY ISLANDS)
ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT
Orotava, the ancient Taoro of the Guanches, is situated on a very steep declivity. The streets seem deserted; the houses are solidly built, and of gloomy appearance. We passed along a lofty aqueduct, lined with a great number of fine ferns; and visited several gardens, in which the fruit trees of the north of Europe are mingled with orange trees, pomegranates, and date trees. We were assured, that these last were as little productive here as on the coast of Cumana. Although we had been made acquainted, from the narratives of many travellers, with the dragon-tree in M. Franqui’s garden, we were not the less struck with its enormous size. We were told, that the trunk of this tree, which is mentioned in several very ancient documents as marking the boundaries of a field, was as gigantic in the Fifteenth Century as it is in the present time. Its height appeared to us to be about fifty or sixty feet; its circumference near the roots is forty-five feet. We could not measure higher, but Sir George Staunton found that, ten feet from the ground, the diameter of the trunk is still twelve English feet; which corresponds perfectly with the statement of Borda, who found its mean circumference thirty-three feet, eight inches, French measure. The trunkis divided into a great number of branches, which rise in the form of a candelabrum, and are terminated by tufts of leaves, like the yucca which adorns the valley of Mexico. This division gives it a very different appearance from that of the palm-tree.
Among organic creations, this tree is undoubtedly, together with the Adansonia or baobab of Senegal, one of the oldest inhabitants of our globe. The baobabs are of still greater dimensions than the dragon-tree of Orotava. There are some which near the root measure thirty-four feet in diameter, though their total height is only from fifty to sixty feet. But we should observe, that the Adansonia, like the ochroma, and all the plants of the family of bombax, grow much more rapidly than the dracæna, the vegetation of which is very slow. That in M. Franqui’s garden still bears every year both flowers and fruit. Its aspect forcibly exemplifies “that eternal youth of nature,†which is an inexhaustible source of motion and of life.
Thedracæna, which is seen only in cultivated spots in the Canary Islands, at Madeira, and Porto Santo, presents a curious phenomenon with respect to the emigration of plants. It has never been found in a wild state on the continent of Africa. The East Indies is its real country. How has this tree been transplanted to Teneriffe, where it is by no means common? Does its existence prove, that, at some very distant period, the Guanches had connexions with other nations originally from Asia?[8]
THE DRAGON TREE.
THE DRAGON TREE.
THE DRAGON TREE.
The age of trees is marked by their size, and the union of age with the manifestation of constantly renewed vigour is a charm peculiar to the vegetable kingdom. The gigantic Dragon-tree of Orotava (as sacred in the eyes of the inhabitants of the Canaries as the olive-tree in the Citadel of Athens, or the Elm of Ephesus), the diameter of which I found, when I visited those islands, to be more than sixteen feet, had the same colossal size when the French adventurers, the Béthencourts, conquered these gardens of the Hesperides in the beginning of the Fifteenth Century; yet it still flourishes, as if in perpetual youth, bearing flowers and fruit. A tropical forest of Hymenæas and Cæsalpinieæ may perhaps present to us a monument of more than a thousand years’ standing.
This colossal dragon-tree,Dracæna draco, stands in one of the most delightful spots in the world. In June, 1799, when we ascended the Peak of Teneriffe, we measured the circumference of the tree and found it nearly forty-eight English feet. Our measurement was taken several feet above the root. Lower down, and nearer to the ground, Le Dru made it nearly seventy-nine English feet. The height of the tree is not much above sixty-nine English feet. According to tradition, this tree was venerated bythe Guanches (as was the ash-tree of Ephesus by the Greeks, or as the Lydian plane-tree which Xerxes decked with ornaments, and the sacred Banyan-tree of Ceylon), and at the time of the first expedition of the Béthencourts in 1402, it was already as thick and as hollow as it now is. Remembering that the Dracæna grows extremely slowly, we are led to infer the high antiquity of the tree of Orotava. Bertholet in his description of Teneriffe, says: “En comparant les jeunes Dragonniers, voisins de l’arbre gigantesque, les calcus qu’on fait sur l’ âge de ce dernier effraient l’imagination.†(Nova Acta Acad. Leop. Carol. Naturæ Curiosorum 1827, vol. xiii., p. 781.) The dragon-tree has been cultivated in the Canaries, and in Madeira and Porto Santo, from the earliest times; and an accurate observer, Leopold von Buch, has even found it wild in Teneriffe, near Igueste....
The measurement of the dragon-tree of the Villa Franqui was made on Borda’s first voyage with Pingré, in 1771; not in his second voyage, in 1776, with Varela. It is affirmed that in the earlier times of the Norman and Spanish conquests, in the Fifteenth Century, Mass was said at a small altar erected in the hollow trunk of the tree. Unfortunately, the dragon-tree of Orotava lost one side of its top in the storm of the 21st of July, 1819.
Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America during the years 1799-1804(London, 1825); andAspects of Nature(Philadelphia, 1849).
Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America during the years 1799-1804(London, 1825); andAspects of Nature(Philadelphia, 1849).
FOOTNOTES:[7]This famous tree was blown down by a storm in 1868. Its age was estimated from five to six thousand years.—E. S.[8]The form of the dragon-tree is exhibited in several species of the genus Dracæna, at the Cape of Good Hope, in China, and in New Zealand. But in New Zealand it is superseded by the form of the yucca; for theDracæna borealisof Aiton is a Convallaria, of which it has all the appearance. The astringent juice, known in commerce by the name of dragon’s blood, is, according to the inquiries we made on the spot, the produce of several American plants. At Laguna, toothpicks steeped in the juice of the dragon-tree are made in the nunneries, and are much extolled as highly useful for keeping the gums in a healthy state.
[7]This famous tree was blown down by a storm in 1868. Its age was estimated from five to six thousand years.—E. S.
[7]This famous tree was blown down by a storm in 1868. Its age was estimated from five to six thousand years.—E. S.
[8]The form of the dragon-tree is exhibited in several species of the genus Dracæna, at the Cape of Good Hope, in China, and in New Zealand. But in New Zealand it is superseded by the form of the yucca; for theDracæna borealisof Aiton is a Convallaria, of which it has all the appearance. The astringent juice, known in commerce by the name of dragon’s blood, is, according to the inquiries we made on the spot, the produce of several American plants. At Laguna, toothpicks steeped in the juice of the dragon-tree are made in the nunneries, and are much extolled as highly useful for keeping the gums in a healthy state.
[8]The form of the dragon-tree is exhibited in several species of the genus Dracæna, at the Cape of Good Hope, in China, and in New Zealand. But in New Zealand it is superseded by the form of the yucca; for theDracæna borealisof Aiton is a Convallaria, of which it has all the appearance. The astringent juice, known in commerce by the name of dragon’s blood, is, according to the inquiries we made on the spot, the produce of several American plants. At Laguna, toothpicks steeped in the juice of the dragon-tree are made in the nunneries, and are much extolled as highly useful for keeping the gums in a healthy state.