Willow trees like damp sports, so they aren’t common in the Canary Islands, but there’s one on the road to the observatory and its catkins are in flower. The tree looks almost luminous.
I’m doing lots of tour guiding and steadily working on the book, but I made time to go out for a photo stroll with a friend. Oddly, the best pictures of the day came when I stopped at the visitor centre on the way home.
In the 1850s the export market for Palmeran wine collapsed, and somebody had the bright idea of going into cochineal production. Before the advent of synthetic dyes, this was far and away the best red dye available, particularly for wool. For one thing, it doesn’t fade. Cochineal is made from a parasitic insect (Dactylopius coccus), which lives on prickly pears (tuneras), so the plants and insects were imported from Mexico….
In the 1850s the export market for Palmeran wine collapsed, and somebody had the bright idea of going into cochineal production. Before the advent of synthetic dyes, this was far and away the best red dye available, particularly for wool. For one thing, it doesn’t fade. Cochineal is made from a parasitic insect (Dactylopius coccus), which lives on prickly pears (tuneras), so the plants and insects were imported from Mexico….