This is the lovely little Palmeran Violet, Viola palmensis. It only grows on La Palma, above 1,900 m. (There’s a similar violet on Tenerife, but it has smaller flowers). It used to be rare, but the island government has a program of replanting areas and it’s making a comeback. You can find them beside the road from Santa Cruz to the Roque de los Muchachos well above the tree line….
La Palma has lots of rare plants which grow nowhere else, and many of them are threatened by grazing or habitat loss. This is one of two species called Parrot’s Beak or Fire Beak (Lotus pyranthus), both of them very rare in the wild and officially classified as “in danger of extinction”. But here it is growing beside the road to the Roque. Mind you, it’s not exactly wild –…
All the heather trees are in bloom along the road to the Roque de los Muchachos. Yes, heather trees. Canarian heather (Erica arborea) is close relatives of English and Scottish heather, but it’s a tree, growing anything up to 5 m tall. The tiny leaves are very like English heather, and the flowers are much the same shape, but always white. The wood’s very dense and hard, so it’s good…
All the heather trees are in bloom along the road to the Roque de los Muchachos. Yes, heather trees. Canarian heather (Erica arborea) is close relatives of English and Scottish heather, but it’s a tree, growing anything up to 5 m tall. The tiny leaves are very like English heather, and the flowers are much the same shape, but always white. The wood’s very dense and hard, so it’s good…
A butterfly on amor-secalo (Bidens alba) Yesterday was a public holiday here, so I went to see my friends in Franceses Alone, since my husband and son didn’t want to come. It was drizzling when I left, but the sun was shining by the time I got there. We had the usual wide-ranging conversation about how their house was getting on, how my writing was getting on, and whether your…