The damage caused by the fire last August in Tenerife continues.
Although the Canary pine is resilient and capable of recovering from the flames, not all news is good. One of the most beloved and unique pines on the island has not been able to overcome the damage caused by the fire and has already been declared dead. This has been confirmed by the association Phenix Canarias, responsible for promoting and disseminating projects for the improvement of forest and environmental management in the archipelago, through their social networks.
Specifically, this concerns the Hand of God Pine, a “singular giant” that lived in the pine forest of La Orotava.
Characteristics
As the organization explains, most trees – especially pines – tend to maintain a certain symmetry in their crowns, but the case of the Hand of God Pine was special.
This tree was a 25-meter “giant”. But its true singularity is that from two meters high, the trunk split into seven others, like the fingers of a hand, leaving a huge cavity in the center.
Theories
In 2022, the Phenix Canarias association published its two theories on how this pine could have grown in such a unique way.
The first theory is that shoots may have sprouted from the base of this pine. A case of uncommon asexual reproduction in pines where, from bud formation, the development of several trunks has occurred simultaneously. The second theory is that these are several pines that, growing very close to each other, instead of competing, ended up merging into a single individual.
