A small rock in the Atlantic

Pointsetia, Mazo, La Palma, Canary Islands

Pointsetias grow wild on La Palma, and they grew to an amazing size. This one is about ten feet high, and if you look closely, you can see it gets pruned back to under a foot every year. As you can see, they're much leggier than the ones they sell in the UK.

Cardon, Mazo, La Palma, Canary Islands

And these are another plant that grows wild on La Palma, called cardon in Spanish. It looks like a cactus, doesn't it? But actually, it's a close relative of pointsetias. For scientific types, they're in the same genus.

Yes really. You can see it when you look at the flowers. Not everybody realises that the red parts of a pointsetia aren't petals; they're red leaves. The flowers are the tiny yellow things inthe centre. And they're a very similar shape to the tiny dark-red flowers you get on cardon.