The main attraction in ICOD DE LOS VINOS is the giant yucca-like dragon tree , El Drago; and though the town is one of the oldest inhabited sites on the island, only a small portion of it is particularly historic. Luckily for visitors, this area of sixteenth-century houses with ornate balconies is right beside the tree, making exploration of the most interesting parts of town an easy one-stop trip.

El Drago , the world's largest and oldest specimen of the endemic dragon tree, stands above the main road at the western end of town. Though its dimensions make the tree commanding enough - seventeen metres high and with a six metre trunk circumference - its true impressiveness arises from its age. In the late eighteenth century the German scientist Humboldt proclaimed it to be the oldest living thing on earth, and estimations of its age have ranged from about 3000 years to around 500 years - the last the best current estimation of its age. Even at a sprightly 500 years old, it pre-dates all the buildings that surround it. The tree stands in a garden, to which admission is charged (¬3), but many visitors satisfy themselves with looking at it for free from an elevated shady square nearby, next to the late sixteenth-century lglesia de San Marcos . The church is worth a look, too, for its Baroque interior, fine Canarian pine ceiling and the two-metre high filigree silver cross on the altar.

For a closer look at a dragon tree, albeit not the oldest on the island, head a short way up Calle de San Antonio past stylish sixteenth- and seventeenth-century buildings to the Drago Chico . This old town district also contains the Mariposa del Drago (daily 9.30am-6pm; ¬4; tel 922/815 167), a tropical garden swarming with butterflies, and the Restaurante Carmen , Avda de Las Canarias 1, a reasonable-quality Canarian restaurant with fairly moderate prices whose menu includes a good local stew, the Puchero Canario (¬5).

The Dragon tree

With its twisted trunk and many-branched crown, the dragon tree has the appearance of a giant frayed rope. Once common around the Mediterranean, ice-ages pushed its habitat further south around twenty million years ago, eventually restricting the tree's habitat to the Canary Islands, where the climate has remained remarkably stable. The tree's unusual characteristics - the gnarled wood, geometric buds and the sheer longevity of each specimen have earned it plenty of attention and respect over the years. Guanche elders and kings held court beneath the canopy of these trees, and the people believed the tree could foretell the future - a fine blossom pointing to a fine harvest. But the dragon tree's most striking feature - the bleeding of red rubbery sap, or dragon's blood, when cut - has not only given the tree its name, but has also been used in a wide variety of applications. The Guanches used it in various healing salves, to keep their teeth healthy and even in their mummification process. More recently it has been used as dye in toothpaste, marble, Italian violins and Venetian ladies' hair. The popularity of the sap has meant many dragon trees were tapped to death, and now only a sprinkling of large specimens survive in the Anaga and Teno regions of Tenerife. Though clearly aged, these specimens are notoriously hard to date, since they don't form annual rings like most other trees. A dragon tree's roots encircle and conceal the original stem which gradually rots away inside, leaving estimations of its age to be based on the tree's habit of throwing out a new branch every ten to twelve years