La Palma’s pink tajinaste puts on spectacular spring show

Unique natural spectacle in La Palma’s highlands

Nature is currently putting on a display in the highlands of La Palma that is unique in the world. The pink tajinaste is staging its traditional spring parade across the island’s peaks, with this exclusive species showing off its finest colours in full bloom, as it does every year at this time.

From the brink of extinction

These cone-shaped plants, endemic to La Palma, were nearly wiped out in the 1980s, when only around 200 specimens remained, clinging to almost inaccessible cliffs in the Caldera de Taburiente. Today, after a long and painstaking recovery effort, their tall, vividly coloured spikes proliferate across various points of the island’s crown in spring. They can be seen along the edges of the LP-4 road, around kilometre 27.5, in the Vizcaíno ravine (though this road is closed for works between Pico de la Nieve and Pico de la Cruz from Monday to Friday, 09:00 to 17:00); around El Reventón in Puntagorda; and at La Tabladita in Tijarafe.

High-altitude hotspots

“The tajinastes in the firebreak at El Reventón are found at altitudes of 1,700 to 2,000 metres above Llano de las Ánimas,” explains Ángel Palomares, director of the Caldera de Taburiente National Park. “There are patches at different heights right up to the upper pine forest,” he adds. “At La Tabladita there are two patches at around 1,900 and 2,000 metres.” This site can only be reached on foot or by four-wheel-drive vehicle, he notes. “The other place where they are abundant near the LP-4 road is around the Roque de los Muchachos Visitor Centre and in the firebreak below it.”

A history of repopulation

The tajinastes in Vizcaíno ravine, Palomares indicates, come from an initial hand-sowing in 2009. “Those in the firebreak below the Roque Visitor Centre come from a hand-sowing in 2006, and those at La Tabladita and El Reventón from different levels of a helicopter sowing in autumn 2006. The Llano de las Ánimas was repopulated in 2003, and some seeds from those repopulations colonised the nearby firebreak below.”

This species, he explains, dies after it flowers and fruits. It takes between three and five years to grow large enough to bloom. It is a rosette-shaped plant that can reach a metre in diameter before flowering. “The bigger the rosette, the larger the inflorescence that appears later, containing thousands of individual flowers packed together in a compact pine-like shape, with varying sizes,” Palomares detailed.

Recovery programme

From 1990 onwards, he recalls, a recovery programme was carried out that included sowings and repopulations, some of them in areas accessible by car and four-wheel-drive: roads (such as the one to Roque de Los Muchachos) and some firebreaks (El Reventón and La Tabladita).

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