Icod Dragon Tree

Dragon trees look like something from another geological age. Dracaena draco is native to the Canary Islands, where it has become a living emblem of the archipelago. The most famous individual of the species stands in Icod de los Vinos on the north coast of Tenerife. El Drago Milenario, the "thousand-year-old dragon", rises about 20 metres, with a trunk roughly 20 metres around at the base and a crown of more than three hundred main branches that fork again and again into rosettes of stiff blue-green leaves.

The "thousand years" should be taken loosely. Dragon trees have no annual rings, and estimates of this tree's age have ranged absurdly, from a 1907 Swiss study that proposed 2,500 years to a 1975 assessment that allowed only about 350. More recent thinking puts it somewhere around 800 to 1,000 years, which would still make it a venerable tree by any standard. Its bulk is formidable, estimated at around 140 tonnes, and the trunk is hollow, with a cavity about six metres high inside that has been ventilated to keep the tree healthy.

What makes the tree so compelling is its strange architecture. The trunk is not a single column but a fused bundle of aerial roots and stems, deeply fluted and folded like poured wax. Above it the branches spread in a dense, almost geometric umbrella. Seen against the Atlantic light and the whitewashed houses of the old town below, it feels less like a plant than a monument.

It is treated as one. The tree was declared a national monument in 1917, it appeared on the Spanish 1,000-peseta note, and it features on the coat of arms of Icod de los Vinos. It now stands inside the Parque del Drago, a garden of about three hectares planted with Tenerife's native flora, from younger dragon trees to cardón spurges and tabaibas, with a small volcanic cave once used as a burial place by the Guanches, the island's pre-Hispanic people. The park lies close to the church of San Marcos, from whose surroundings the tree is also visible. Local legends have long attached themselves to it, as they do to dragon trees throughout the islands.

Getting there

The Drago is in the centre of Icod de los Vinos, on the north-west coast of Tenerife. The nearest airport by distance is Tenerife South (TFS), about 39 km away across the island; Tenerife North, near La Laguna, is also convenient for the north coast.