Next day I had arranged to meet my new friend Carlo Morici in Santa Cruz, the capital of Tenerife. He is a biologist employed as a consultant to assist in developing the Palmetum there and very kindly offered to show us around in between his work. They have a staggering 250 species of palm in the ground, with a further 150 species waiting to go in. An incredible resource and, hopefully, not too long before it is open to the public. Here are a group of the unfailingly impressive Bismarkia nobilis:
Here a closer view of that stocky crown:
Here a group of Roystonea spp - possibly R. regis
Here the massively impressive Corypha baileyana
A caryota silhouetted against the sky in the shadehouse
And the view back across to Santa Cruz city against the backdrop of the Anaga mountains.
We took Carlo for an extended lunch then, in increasingly failing light, he showed us around his own garden and nearby grove of Phoenix canariensis.