35-14 Dragon Blood tree in Victoria Park

Following the path from the Britannia intersection into the park, on your left is a beautiful specimen of Dragon Blood Tree.

This tree is native to a small island off the horn of Africa in the Arabian sea - the island of Socotra, where the species is endangered.

The island is part of the war-torn country of Yemen which is hundreds of kilometres away to the north, The island s rich in biodiversity. Most of its species occur nowhere else on earth - and the island together with three others nearby, has World Heritage status.

The tree is called "Dragon Blood" due to the red sap that the trees produce.

It's estimated that a Dragon Blood Tree, from a straight trunk, will flower and produce a new ring of branches every ten years.

Perhaps you can count the number of branching points from trunk to the canopy and guess this one’s age?

One specimen in the Canary Islands, destroyed by a storm in 1868, was claimed to be about 6,000 years old.

From this point walk across a short distance to the west, to look at a blue-painted weatherboard building nearby.

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