Drago de Galdar

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.