The Dragon Tree of Villa Malfitano

This tree bleeds, or its close relatives do: cut into a dragon tree's bark and the sap that runs out is dark red, sold for centuries across Europe as sangue di drago, dragon's blood, a dye and wound treatment. Palermo's own specimen, a Dracaena draco with a trunk just under six metres around, grows in the private botanical garden the Whitaker family built around their villa in the 1880s. The Whitakers had made their fortune in Marsala wine, the fortified wine Joseph Whitaker's grandfather helped turn into a British staple, and Joseph spent part of it hiring the botanist Emilio Kunzmann to fill the grounds with plants gathered from Tunisia, Sumatra and Australia rather than the classical statuary a Sicilian villa garden usually got. The dragon tree, native to the Canary Islands and Macaronesia rather than anywhere the family's ships actually sailed, was one specimen among that collection, assembled for curiosity rather than status. Its crown has since branched into the tiered, umbrella-like shape the species only reaches after decades of growth, each segment ending in a burst of stiff blue green leaves. No record survives of the exact planting date, only that it arrived with the rest of Kunzmann's garden. The park is free to walk; only the villa's interior charges for a guided tour.