Is Fluoride killing Tenerife's Dragon Trees in the Canary Islands?

Thanks, I have received your address and will try and send some over next week. They take about 3 weeks to a month to germinate and you need to soak them for a day before planting. And don't give them water with fluoride if you can help it once they are up!

I can send you some seeds if you email me your address. Fluoride is supposed to be added gradually but I have heard of it done wrongly like you describe here. Twice there have been news stories when it has been admitted that the level in the public water was too much and people were advised not to drink or cook with the tap water! Are the people in charge of it stupid or what?

Dragon Trees don't grow naturally in mainland Spain and hardly grow in the wild here now but there are plenty in parks and gardens, although many are sick.

I hope there some trees left there! It's not just in the rainforests that trees are being destroyed it is everywhere!

Jarn, yes, fluoride makes people docile - ideal for control purposes and if you don't want people who go along with the oppressive crap dished out, ideal if you don't want demonstrations and mass protests!

Pete and Watch Tower, the situation is a new one - the trees have only started dying like this in the past year or so and my theory is that the fluoride is weakening them because as the links provided show Dracaenas cannot tolerate it.

Fluoride has been added to the water supplies here and has actually made the press on several occasions when the authorities issued an alert to say too much had gone into the supplies for a list of districts and people were advised not to use this for drinking or cooking. The trees are commonly planted in borders along roads, in gardens, parks, in town squares etc and these areas are all watered regularly.

The south of the island is more or less dependent on this artificial means of keeping plants alive. If you took away the water the place would revert to arid desert and and scrubland. In the north there is more natural water from rain in winter and moisture from clouds all year round but many endemic plants to not grow in the summer and many die back or become dormant. People expect to see luxuriant growth, flowers and greenery.

Dragon Trees naturally will grow on cliffs and mountainsides and don't need a lot of water but they take even longer to grow in these conditions and there are only a small number in the wild now.

There are two sources of water here - domestic water supplies and water for farmers from holding tanks and reservoirs and much of it is piped from underground sources and from in the mountains. The usual way public gardens and borders are watered is by hose pipes and sprinklers that connect with the mains supplies along all roads.

The additional problem that I have noted is the scale insects. It is possible this is a new insect pest on the island but it seems doubtful. The whole place suffers from terrible attacks by white fly, aphids, meally bugs, spider mite, and other pests and the amounts of insecticide used here are ridiculous but people don't know what else to do.

All the very sick trees are covered in scale insects but sick trees are often displaying brown spots and yellowing in the leaves consistent with fluoride damage or some sort of fungal attack as well.

The official means of treating is to cut of the leaves in the hope that that will get rid of most of the infestation and will force the tree to produce new leaves in the growing point. This pruning is also standard for palms which have the lower leaves chopped off.

An additional problem is that trees are moved about and planted ready grown and are then subjected to waterings to get them to root. Sometimes the shock of moving is too much and they fail.It is common to see palms that have died from this cause. There is a process of ongoing development, building and road-making here and once something is created the practise is is to plant some borders with ornamental ready-grown. shrubs and trees.

All seeds germinate easily but the Dragon Tree is exceedingly slow in growing and appears like an Agave or Aloe as a spiky rossette for several years before it grows upwards at all. Pruning speeds this up as it does with palms.

There is actually a Dragon Tree that grew from a seed I sent over to a friend in the US and the little tree in a garden survived Katrina but many much bigger ones are not surviving here.

Thanks for posting, Ivorwen and RooBee!

"What can be done?" For the trees, very little! The council here that pay workers to prune and remove dying and dead trees at the same time approve the fluoride that goes in the water supply!

I may try getting an article in the Tenerife News though. They once published an expose I wrote about fluoride and I got to reply to someone who complained about it.

I don't know what will happen if their prized tourist attraction thousand-year-old tree starts dying though. The island has already lost its other very ancient specimens some years back due to storms.

The whole situation is crazy! The Dragon Tree is a supposedly protected species under Annexe II of the Flora Order and the Berne Agreement (Annexe I) and yet the berries, which each contain a seed, are regularly pruned off and thrown away or swept up and discarded although at the same time you can buy a packet of two or three seeds in a shop for just over 1€! Or go to garden centre and buy a ready germinated baby tree or a bigger one for a lot more.