Читать книгу Walking on Lanzarote and Fuerteventura. Including sections of the GR131 long-distance trail онлайн

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Wildlife

Plants and flowers

(top to bottom) The squat and spiky cardón de Jandía is endemic to the Jandía peninsula on Fuerteventura; uvilla, looking like a little bunch of grapes, is found along arid coastlines; rubbery-stalked verode is a common sight in scrub on all the islands

While the northern hemisphere was in the grip of an Ice Age, the Canary Islands were sluiced by rainstorms, with powerful rivers carving deep, steep-sided barrancos into unstable layers of ash and lava. As the landmasses emerged from the Ice Age, the Canary Islands dried out and the vegetation had to adapt to survive. Some species are well adapted to semi-desert conditions, while on the highest parts of the islands, laurisilva ‘cloud forests’ are able to trap moisture from the mists and keep themselves well watered. Laurisilva forests once spread all the way round the Mediterranean and tropical regions. Small remnants of this forest survive on the higher northern slopes of most of the Canary Islands, but not on Lanzarote or Fuerteventura.