What are the dragon trees of Soqotra?
By Chelsie Vandaveer
November 6, 2003
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The dragon tree of Soqotra (Dracaena cinnabari Balfour f.) is a relict. The plants were named by Professor Isaac Bayley Balfour after his botanical expedition to Soqotra in 1880. The genus, Dracaena, is in the Agavaceae, the agave family, although there are those who give these monocots their own family, Dracaenaceae. Twenty million years ago, the ancestral dragon trees stretched from the Canary Islands to steppes of southern Russia.
From The Herbal, 1633 edition.
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The Dragon tree
from John Gerard's
The Herbal, 1633 edition.
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The dragon tree's trunk is straight and terminates in an umbel-like cluster of branches. In silhouette, the tree resembles a mushroom or an inside-out umbrella. The sword-shaped leaves are clustered at the top of the plant.
The dragon trees of Soqotra are members of a unique class of plants--the Mio-Pliocene xerophilic-sclerophyllous southern Tethys Flora. Soqotran plants were isolated since the archipelago (one large and several tiny islands) separated from the Horn of Africa six million years ago.
Dragon trees are xerophiles, plants of dry habitats. They grow at elevations over 500 meters (1600 feet) in submontane thickets and montane grasslands. The leaves are sclerophyllous--hardened or leathery. They are remnants of the plants that evolved on land surrounded by the southern Tethys, an ancient and now nonexistent ocean between the Gondwana and Laurasia.
Those dragon trees left on the island are tending toward "patriarch age" upwards of a guesstimated age of 300+ years. Seedlings and young trees cling to steep cliff faces suggesting that livestock, goats and sheep, are grazing out young trees in more easily accessible areas.
The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh has a wonderful website about Soqotra. To learn more about the unique and beautiful island, click on the link:
http://rbg-web2.rbge.org.uk/soqotra/home/page01.html
(Compiled from: "Naturalist in Socotra", Dr. Wolfgang Wranik, Universitat Rostock, Yemen Update, 1995 and "Saving the Flora" Soqotra's Spectacular Flora, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh)
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Suggested Reading:
Why did Alexander take the island of bliss? Plants that Changed History - November 4, 2003
What are the dragon trees of Soqotra? Weird Plants - November 6, 2003
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Dragon tree legend and lore Herbal Folklore - November 10, 2003
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