Drago de l'Illa del Llatzeret

Nobody has to estimate this one. The Balearic register gives a planting year, 1928, which makes this dragon tree about 98 years old and the only tree on this page carrying a date rather than a range. It went into the garden of the Lazareto de Mao, the quarantine station built on its own island in the harbour for ships and travellers arriving from the Indies, and used to treat infectious disease. That is why there is a walled garden out here at all, and why anything planted in it has been left alone for a century. Dracaena draco belongs to the Canary Islands and grows nothing like a Mediterranean tree. This one is 3.8 metres tall with a crown 9.4 metres across, thrown out on seven primary branches from a trunk 2.5 metres round at chest height and 3.8 at the foot. Wider than it is high, in other words. The register catalogued it in 2003 and rates it as one of the few large dragon trees in the Balearics that is well preserved, unmutilated and grew where it stands rather than being moved there. It was fruiting heavily and its leaves were in good condition when the survey was done. The island belongs to the Spanish health ministry. You get there on the guided boat from the Calesfonts dock in Es Castell, seasonal, booked in advance, about two and a half hours.