The variety of plant life, along with hiking trails and sunshine, is one reason enough to visit La Palma in the Canary Islands. To start with there is the abundance of bananas, with the island home to many banana farmers. You see them growing everywhere. For some, this is a travesty, a dominating monoculture that has usurped native flora. For others, it’s preferable to the impact of infrastructure and noise that the economically viable alternative of increased tourism will bring. Coming from the UK, you can’t help but be fascinated by the morphology of the banana plant, both singularly and en masse. Each part – leaves, fruit, flower are so architecturally memorable. The large purple flower is a thing of wonder. Like the yellow skinned fruit, it is also edible and is now quite often used as a meat substitute in the plant-based community. The big green leaf wands are so impressive in their own right, that we grow them as decorative indoor plants. And then there is the bananas themselves with their incredible bunched formation. In La Palma the bananas they serve are tiny, and taste delicious. They are unlike anything else you will get at home in the UK. Even ones imported from La Palma will not taste like the ones you will eat in La Palma.
Then, like the rest of Spain there is the proliferation of Prickly Pears (Opuntia), brought in centuries ago for their many household uses. Just like the banana these plants also have morphological and aesthetic appeal (see cacti images below), to those of us that live in climates where cacti are not naturally abundant.
Yet what makes La Palma extra special botanically is not the introduced plants, but harder to find local ones.
Location of La Palma in the Canary Island archipelago
The island’s native plants, are not just any old native plants, many are endemic which means they originate from here and no-where else. The volcanic landscape island is rather dramatic topographically, low lying coastal scenery (where the bananas dominate) rises up to impressive lush green mountain regions locally known as ‘monteverde’. Different zonal habitats, compacted in this relatively small island, means climatic variation and species diversity.
The plant roll-call, care of Vegetacion y flora de La Palma by Arnoldo Santos Guerra (1983) goes something like this: 774 different plants, 70 endemic to La Palma (found nowhere else but La Palma), 104 endemic to the Canaries (found no where else but the Canary Islands), 33 macaronesic endemisms (only found in the Macaronesian islands: Azores, Madeira, Cape Verde, Canaries), 7 macaronesic African endemisms (only found elsewhere in Africa), 5 macaronesic-Iberian peninsula endemisms (only found elsewhere in Iberia), 90 introduced (brought in or cultivated by humans) and 465 spontaneous (plants not intentionally cultivated that just appeared).
To find out what species go with which group you will need to acquire a copy of this hard to find book, or alternatively once on the island you can look for La Palma: Wild plants and flowers by local photographer Juan Jose Santos. There are also exciting trees to find (not covered in the summary above), with Canarian pine, Canarian Palm and the spectacular and iconic Dragon Tree being three regional species of note. Pine (Pinus canariensis) dominates the largest expanses of forest on the island, a beautifully elegant tree with lime-green needles and scaly bark (see images below); although only a small area remains untouched by earlier deforestation. To partake in contemplative activity, head for the eastern slopes of the island where you will find hillsides of the lovely sounding Laurisilva woodland, which like the Dragon tree is a survivor of the last Ice Age, as well as being an ecologically important habitat housing many of the island’s endemic species.
A selection of endemic, native and introduced plants are shown below.
