Читать книгу Walking on La Gomera and El Hierro. 45 day walks and treks for all abilities онлайн

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Wildlife

Plants and flowers

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 Mediterranean and tropical regions, and one of the best remnants now crowns La Gomera, where it is protected in a national park.

Clockwise from top left: Prickly pear fruit; Canarian lavender; Canarian tagasaste tree

Canary pines flourish on high, dry mountainsides, sometimes in places where nothing else grows. Almost every pine you see will have a scorched trunk, but they regenerate surprisingly well after forest fires. Beware of the long pine needles on the ground, as they are slippery underfoot. Canary palms also flourish in dry places, and in the past every part of the tree had a use; today they provide delicious miel de palma, or palm honey. Every so often dragon trees occur, the last surviving descendants of the ancient prehistoric forests. They have been decimated in the wild but prove popular in gardens.