I am reading Humbolt’s Cosmos by Gerard Helferich and came across an interesting item. There exists on Tenerife a very old dragon tree that was then fifty feet around and the author states that it is still in place.

The text suggests that the species is the same as that in Central America and suggests a puzzle at least. It certainly suggests a research program in which these trees are identified as to genetic signature. The tree in question is surely pre Columbian and that offers an opportunity to determine possibility of human transmission for these plants. That it may be African was not contemplated when this book was written but it now needs to be investigated.

The plant is very old and obviously difficult to age. It also was surely planted by human agency. It is plausible that the tree in central America was also transplanted there by human agency. The age of the tree can be judged by a raw count of the flowering nodes and perhaps carbon fourteen dating.

The age of these trees and the great likelihood of human transportation makes it an excellent research tool. There are no growth rings to make it simple, but each unique node will have a unique age signature. That means the sampling will be costly, but methods today use little of the material so sampling will not harm the tree.

Plenty of comparable trees exist in Morocco and somewhere in Central America, so an extensive sampling program will gives us a long data base. We do not even know just how old the oldest are, but the slow growth suggests something that competes with the bristle cone pine. We may be totally wrong on this, but it needs to be explored.

Dracaena draco