The Dragon Tree of the Orto Botanico

Two dragon trees flank the marble staircase of the botanical garden's neoclassical building. Italy's national register of monumental trees lists one of them, two metres round, and does not say which. Both are visible from the foot of the steps, so the question settles itself in person. Dracaena draco is endemic to the Canary Islands and native nowhere near Sicily, and it looks the part: a pale grey trunk that forks, then forks again, into a flat crown of rosettes, each one a burst of stiff blue-green blades. The forking is how it grows. The stem divides only after it flowers, and it flowers at intervals of many years, which is also the reason nobody can tell you how old this tree is. A dragon tree lays down no annual rings, so the usual method simply does not apply, and no source has published an age for the Catania specimen. The name is not decoration. Its sap oxidises dark red, and was sold across Europe for centuries as dragon's blood, used in varnish, dye and medicine. Unlike the three Villa Bellini trees a few minutes down Via Etnea, this one sits behind a ticket desk in the University of Catania's botanical garden: three euros, two reduced, weekdays until seven and Saturday mornings, closed Sundays.