Wild Flowers of the Canary Islands

My father was a professional botanist, and he went into ecstasies over the wild flowers on La Palma. He was even fascinated by the roadside weeds. You see, because it's an island, the plants evolved in isolation, and in many cases the plant on La Palma is a different sub-species from the plant in neighbouring Tenerife. For example, echium wildipretti is a very tall cone of tiny flowers. The sub-species on La Palma has blue flowers, but the one on Tenerife has pink ones.

Anyone keen on plants will want a book to identify them. This was my father's favourite. The catch is that it was published in 1974 and it's out of print, but Amazon currently has a couple of second hand copies of this edition.

I'll be quite honest. If you buy through this link, I get a small commission, but it doesn't cost you any more.

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Buses on La Palma

La Palma has a pretty good bus service for such a rural place. For example, there's a bus from Santa Cruz (the capital) to the airport via Los Cancajos every half hour.
The buses across the centre of the island between the two main town are half-hourly too, and one goes past the Princess hotel into Los Canarios every two hours.

If you want to see glorious scenery, I recommend the bus around the north, from Santa Cruz, through, Puntallana, Los Sauces, Barlovento (change buses), Gallegos, Franceses, Santa Domingo, Puntagorda Tijarafe and Tazacorte, to Los Llanos. It's 4 hours each way, though.

The maximum fare is capped at 6€.

You can see the current bus timetable here

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