AGE OF TREES 



The record is held by the Dragon tree of Orotava, in the 

 Canary Islands. 



When the Spaniards landed in Teneriffe in 1402, its 

 diameter was very nearly 42 feet. It was, however, greatly 

 injured by a storm in 1827, and finally destroyed in 1851. 

 (The wood was then made into walking-sticks and snuffboxes.) 

 The age has been estimated at 10,000 years, or by other 

 authorities at 8000 years only. The " dragon's blood "*' of 

 the Canaries, a well-known remedy in the Middle Ages, was 

 not, as is popularly supposed, derived from this tree, but was 

 obtained from a totally different plant. 



But there is a hazy tradition to the effect that the story 

 of the Dragon which guarded the golden fruit in the island 

 of the Hesperides was nothing but a garbled account of this 

 redoubtable veteran of the plant world. 



There is no particular advantage in growing to these 

 enormous heights and clinging to life in this way for hun- 

 dreds and thousands of years. Nature seems to have found 

 this out and preferred the ordinary pines, oaks, and larches, 

 which are mature in a few hundred years. In a thousand 

 years, ten generations of larch or pine can be produced, and, 

 as each is probably better than its predecessor, a distinct 

 improvement in the type is possible. All these long-lived 

 giants belong in fact to the less highly specialized orders of 

 plants. They are like the primeval animals, the Mammoths, 

 Atlantosauri, and Sabretoothed Tigers. 



Yet when we come to think of the many and diverse 

 perils to which trees are exposed, the existence of even these 

 exceptional monsters seems very wonderful. 



After a violent storm which had blown down many of the 

 trees in a friend's park,^ I visited the scene of destruction and 

 ^ Dunlop House, Kilmarnock. 

 D 49 



