• The Seer’s Stone
  • The Dodo Dragon and other stories
  • About Sheila Crosby
  • A Breathtaking Window on the Universe

Palmeran Sow Thistles (Sonchus palmensis)

Sow thistles look rather like a dandelion gone balistic. That is, the individual flowers look much like dandelions, but they’re growing on a shrub anything up to 2 m (6 ft) tall. And now they’re flowing all over the island, especially on the east, up to about 1,000 ft. Like so many other plants here, La Palma has a different species from everywhere else – Sonchus palmensis. The local names…

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Carnival programmes 2014

Santa Cruz de La Palma‘s programme is here. (The actual programme starts on page 7) Los Llanos‘s programme is here The programme for Los Sauces is here I’ve just found out that some places (El Paso, Garafía, Tijarafe, Fuencaliente and Puntallana) held their carnival early, presumably so as not to compete with the bigger places. Barlovento‘s is here. Breña Alta had their parade yesterday Breña Baja will have parrandas in…

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Semilla Jazz Festival

La Palma’s first independant jazz festival starts tonight in the H10 Taburiente Playa Hotel in Los Cancajos. The festival will be officially opened on Thursday at 9 pm, followed by music from Manolo Brito Trío. On Friday 21st at 4pm El Jazz en Canarias will play, followed by Raúl Bermúdez and Carlos Martín at 7:30, and Bitter Biscuits with Kike Perdomo will play at 9pm. On Saturday 22nd at 6pm…

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The Caldera

The heart of the island is the Caldera de Taburiente. Caldera is a technical geological term for the crater at the top of a volcano. In fact the term comes from La Palma: all the volcanic calderas in the world were named after ours. So it’s really a pity that, since then, the scientists have found out that the Caldera de Taburiete isn’t a caldera. It was actually formed by…

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