Yes, I confess: we flew to Tenerife to escape the fall.

Summer broke out in Germany just in time for departure, and I was hoping for spooky weather for those at home.

The four weeks - including a six day stay in hospital - went by quickly with three young children and I'm sorry to say that the only real relaxation I found was looking at the lovely plant life.

Andrew Frey

Freelance author in the science section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sunday newspaper.

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I have to limit that again: The flora is only really enchanting in the north and in the mountainous regions.

In the originally barren south, the hotspot of tourism, where we also settled, visitors can expect a completely artificial and by no means endemic flora, which at least suits the dolled-up British women with their fake lashes, plastic nails and other body deformities.

Almost all ornamental shrubs, palm trees or cacti are foreign to the island and should enrich the gardens of the wealthy.

Today they only survive in the desert south thanks to a dense network of drip hoses.

Colonial goods in the garden

With all these new plantings, the Spaniards were once pursuing commercial intentions: the Canary Islands were the test laboratory for the seafaring nation to test the cultivation of exotic plants from other continents.

This worked fairly well with potatoes, corn, tomatoes, bananas and vines, only coffee and cocoa did not want to thrive in the Canary Islands.

The cultivation of sugar cane also failed after the Spaniards had cleared almost all of the native pine stands for production.

Which brings us to the species that is hotly debated because of its special properties after the drought and heat summer in Europe: the Canary Island pine,

Pinus canariensis

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The endemic species grows in Tenerife from a height of a few hundred meters up to high mountain locations and towers over the island like a queen.

The trees tower 15 to 25 meters, in the southwest of Tenerife there is a sixty meter high majesty with a trunk circumference of 265 centimeters.

Its needles, which grow in clusters of three, are able to comb the moisture of the trade wind clouds from the air and allow it to drip further into the ground as condensation, with the tree species contributing significantly to the island's freshwater supply.

However, the massive impact that lasted until the 20th century severely decimated hardwood pine populations;

the wood was mainly used for building ships and houses, but was also burned in ovens.

Reforestation has only been going on for about eighty years, so that now almost a sixth of the island is again covered by a dense, but not yet too high, pine forest.

The pine owes its impressive persistence to another special property that makes foresters prick up their ears in times of climate change: fire resistance.

Cones open after heat shock

Because of the local volcanism, unlike her European relatives, she had to develop highly specialized strategies to withstand the heat and volcanic stones thrown around.

The bark is thick enough to protect it from high temperatures, and the cones open after heat shocks and thus ensure the survival of the species. How successfully the Canary pine defies the fire can currently be admired on the neighboring island of La Palma, where Last year's volcanic eruption devastated large parts of the island.

Perhaps that's what fascinates me about this pine: its tough nature, its ability to handle heat, fire and other setbacks while still appearing totally relaxed at all times.