Lanzarote Trees

I've been encouraged by Little Nell to take the plunge and contribute to Sepia Saturday, and since my home of Lanzarote is essentially an offshore bit of the Sahara, this week's theme about trees seemed like plunging in the deep end!  This first picture, of a Dragon Tree on Tenerife, a neighbouring island, qualifies as old, since I took it on honeymoon 36 years ago, and the tree itself is hundreds of years old.

Most of Lanzarote's trees are palms, but there are exceptions, such as this Papaya in a street in Haria.

And this Acacia, clinging to the cliff  over a footpath running a thousand feet above the sea at Famara.

Every Christmas huge "presents" are hung from this huge old fir in the plaza mayor - the town square - of Haria  where they dangle over the heads of the customers in the cafe below.

Sometimes the palms suffer in the strong trade winds, like this one, bowed but not defeated when it was partially uprooted, but which clawed its way back to the vertical - it's not really being supported by my walking group!

 
Sometimes, they are colonised by euphorbias, such as this parasitic growth

  And sometimes they give in, die, and fold over like this one, reminiscent of an elephant's trunk

The weather is not always perfect here, as this rather surreal image of palm trees in the mist (no gorillas though) shows:

One of our friends, on seeing this blog, sent me a photograph of a very old Acacia in his beautiful garden  overlooking Fuerteventura, across the Bocaina Straits

And finally, an artificial Christmas tree in the Marina Rubicon, Playa Blanca. To me, this picture sums up, better than a thousand words, why we live here in Lanzarote!