Gran Canaria's old trees are pines and dragon trees spread from the coast to the high pine country. The Pino de Casandra above the Presa de las Niñas is over 380 years old by the Cabildo's catalogue of singular trees, and the Drago de Gáldar, planted in 1718, grows in a town hall courtyard. Teror's square has a 38 metre araucaria beside the basilica, Pino Santo has the island's biggest dragon tree on a cliff, and a garden near Arucas keeps a drago older than its palace.
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Canary Pine (Pinus canariensis) · 380 years · Presa de las Ninas, Tejeda
This pine is named after a girl who may never have existed. Legend says Casandra, fifteen years old, was burned at this tree. There is no official version of the story, and Gran Canaria's own tourism board says plainly that nobody knows whether any of it is true. Locals have a second, kinder name for it, the Pino Bonito, the pretty pine.
What is certain is the tree. It stands above the Presa de las Niñas reservoir in the pine country of Tejeda, inside the Parque Rural del Nublo, and the Cabildo's catalogue of singular trees puts it at over 380 years old. The tourism board rounds that to four centuries. It is 25 metres tall and 5.30 metres round at chest height, with a crown about 30 metres across.
It has come through several fires and lightning strikes, and it shows. The trunk carries a large burn scar and the whole tree has grown into a shape nobody would call regular, which is most of its appeal.
In August 2025 the Cabildo began a plan to water it and improve the soil around its roots, and it is marking out paths under the crown to limit trampling. Keep to them. There is parking and a picnic area by the dam, and the tree is a short walk away. Getting here takes about an hour and a half by car from Las Palmas, with no practical bus.
Dragon Tree (Dracaena draco) · 300 years · Galdar historic centre
Gran Canaria's oldest dragon tree lives in a town hall courtyard, and it has outgrown the building. The Cabildo's catalogue of singular trees dates the Drago de Gáldar to 1718, which makes it about 300 years old, and the town's own leaflet gives the same year.
It is 8 metres tall and 4 metres round at chest height, with a crown 12 metres across that rises above the roofline of the old Casas Consistoriales, now the tourist office on the Plaza de Santiago. The trunk still carries engraved scars from the centuries when people tapped it for its red resin, sold as dragon's blood.
It also carries a legend. Doña Catalina, remembered in Gáldar as la regañona, the scold, was a noblewoman said to have faked her own death to get out of a convent and then to have lived as a herbalist beneath this tree.
Its recent history is less romantic. In 2016 a scale insect infestation cost it about 40 percent of its foliage, and recovery was only declared in 2019. It flowers rarely, five or six times in 77 years according to its technical sheet, so nobody should plan a trip around the blossom.
The square around it, with the church of Santiago de los Caballeros, has been a protected historic ensemble since 1981. The courtyard keeps office hours, Monday to Friday from 08:00 to 14:30 by the island tourism board's listing, and the bus station is five minutes away on foot.
Norfolk Island Pine (Araucaria heterophylla) · 100-150 years · Teror centre
Teror's basilica is named after a pine, and the tallest tree beside it is not a true pine at all. By tradition an image of the Virgin was found in a pine tree here in 1481, and the church became Nuestra Señora del Pino. That original tree, the Pino de las Maravillas, fell, and no living tree in the square claims to be it.
What towers over the plaza now is a Norfolk Island Pine, an araucaria from the South Pacific, 38 metres tall and more than 5 metres round. The Cabildo's catalogue of singular trees estimates it at over 100 years old. Treat that as a floor rather than a date. Nobody has recorded when it was planted, and the catalogue is the only source for its age.
The catalogue says its real distinction is its shape. Two parallel trunks rise from a low fork, and the main trunk was probably cut short by a storm or lightning early in the twentieth century. Whatever took the top off, the tree has kept climbing.
At its foot is a stone bench the town calls el queque, where people sit and meet, which makes this as much a piece of Teror's daily life as of its scenery. The catalogue counts at least ten large araucarias around Teror; this is the one in the square, open at all hours. If you know when it went in, tell us.
Dragon Tree (Dracaena draco) · 240-250 years · Pino Santo, Santa Brigida
The biggest dragon tree on Gran Canaria grows on a basalt cliff, about 15 metres above the floor of the Barranco Alonso, and you can only look at it from across the way. RTVC, the Canary Islands broadcaster, calls it the king of the island's dragos.
The Cabildo's catalogue of singular trees gives it 16 metres of height (RTVC says 17), a trunk 4.9 metres round at chest height and a crown about 15 metres wide. Its age is counted from its 15 branchings, which puts it at roughly 240 to 250 years. RTVC, quoting the Cabildo, ranks it the fifth oldest tree on the island.
The catalogue drops its usual dry tone for this one. It calls it the most spectacular wild-looking tree on Gran Canaria, framing the garden below like a scene from Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights, and it admits a worry that the rock holding it could one day give way.
In 2020 a cochineal infestation turned about a quarter of the crown yellow. The Cabildo treated it in four rounds from a crane that June and brought the plague under control, and it still keeps watch. It is also counted among the 100 singular trees of Macaronesia.
The tree stands on private land and the finca is not open. See it from the GC-151 road that climbs to Pino Santo, or from the floor of the barranco, about 25 minutes by car from Las Palmas.
Dragon Tree (Dracaena draco) · 230-250 years · La Vega, Arucas
This dragon tree is older than the palace it now decorates. When the Marqués Ramón Madan y Uriondo built his colonial palace between Arucas and Bañaderos in 1880, this drago was already standing, according to the Cabildo's catalogue of singular trees.
The catalogue cannot quite settle on its age. Its figures say about 230 years, its text says about 250, both counted from the tree's 15 branchings, so somewhere between the two is the honest answer. It is 10 metres tall and 4.3 metres round at chest height, with a base 1.6 metres across and a crown spreading 14 metres.
There are three dragon trees here, which matters if you want the right one. Two centenarian dragos stand at the garden entrance, and the catalogue says this one outclasses them both. Look for the largest of the three.
The Jardín de la Marquesa, also called the Jardín de las Hespérides, has been open to the public since 1985. Check its current hours and entry fee before you go. It sits on the Vega road about 25 minutes by car from Las Palmas, with a bus from Arucas towards Bañaderos.
The same catalogue lists a eucalyptus nearby known as the Árbol Bonito. If you have seen it, tell us where it stands.