Legends of Tenerife
Apples and dragons: the origin of the dragon tree
According to legend, the story of the origin of dragon trees, such as our thousand-year old specimen in Icod, embraces three sisters, a bunch of apples and a gruesomely slain dragon. Those of a sensitive disposition may look away now.

The story begins in 8BC with a Greek poet who went by the name of Hesiod. Hesiod was renowned for being a bit shall we say, left of centre, and on one of his more wayward days of musing, he wrote about the legendary Garden of Hesperydes. So here we go. Atlas, he of the very strong shoulders, had been condemned to hold up the sky beyond the Columns of Hercules (Straits of Gibraltar) after losing a particularly gory battle with Zues, the king of the gods. Atlas had three daughters, collectively known as the Hesperydes – don’t ask why – who lived in the most westerly land of the world, some wonderful islands in the Atlantic Ocean, where the weather was always fine, golden apples grew in abundance and in a time when car parking was not a problem, namely the Canaries. Now, the Hesperydes Sisters cultivated the gardens, but it was fiery dragon called Ladon, with a hundred flame-spewing heads, each with lots of sharp, pointy teeth, who looked after it. Enter Hercules. Perhaps the greatest hero of ancient times, Hercules had been allocated, amongst other things in his busy heroic schedule, the duty of accomplishing twelve tricky tasks. Number 11 on his list consisted of stealing the Hesperydes’ golden apples, so obligingly off he set. Hercules found Atlas holding up the sky in the mountains we now call the Atlas Mountains in Morrocco. Since Hercules knew that Atlas was aquainted with the dragon, and also knew that Atlas was probably a little more than fed up with his ongoing sky-supporting activities, he managed to persuade him to go to the garden and steal the apples himself while Hercules held up the sky in his place. Atlas obliged, went to the garden, killed the dragon and stole the apples as arranged, and then returned to the place where Hercules had taken over. Atlas, having decided that apple collecting and dragon slaying were more up his street, decided to leave Hercules with the burden on his shoulders, but was outmanouvered by the hero who dumped the sky back onto Atlas and fled with the bag of Granny Smiths. So why the connection with the trees you may ask if you’ve followed the story thus far? Well, blood flowing from the dragon’s wounds fell all over the Garden of Hesperydes and where each drop fell, a tree sprouted. Dragon trees have massive trunks from which rise bunches of twisted branches, not unlike the many heads of Ladon! When a piece of bark or a branch are broken off, the tree ‘bleeds’ a dark red sap called ‘dragon blood’, which has been used medicinally for decades in the Canary Islands. And that is how the Dragon Tree of Icod came to be – apparently!

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