The dragon's blood tree still lives -- but there are less of them

 

Good read from the Guardian.

Saving the dragon’s blood: how an island refused to let a legendary tree die out

"Most trees draw water from the soil and up their roots to the leaves; dragon’s blood trees can also do the reverse, taking water from the air and passing it into the soil. Scientists suggest that the unique shape of the dragon’s blood tree is an adaptation to life in its arid environment, allowing the trees to capture moisture from the fog and clouds, a process called horizontal precipitation capture. Researchers estimate that each dragon’s blood tree can inject several times more water into the soil than the local environment captures as rainfall, providing a critical component of the island’s hydrological system.

“One dragon’s blood tree brings a huge amount of water into the system,” says Kay Van Damme, a European researcher at Ghent University in Belgium and Mendel University, who is also the chair of the UK-based volunteer group Friends of Socotra and has worked on the island since the late 1990s. “If you lose a tree, you also lose hundreds of litres of water each year that would otherwise go into the system,” he says."

And how they're saving it, a combination of keeping track of mature trees and growing juvenile trees, which grow slow:

"Today, the saplings no longer require regular watering, but Keabanni still visits every few days to guard against the persistent threat of goats. He estimates that the animals have eaten about 200 saplings over the years, and almost all the 600 surviving plants have been gnawed at the ends.

Once the saplings have grown tall enough, the dragon’s blood trees will be moved to the wild. But dragon’s blood trees are exceptionally slow growing, only 2.65cm over a five-year period."

Yes, they grow very slow.

This is the resin that gives the tree its name: