“We can’t throw the bells into the air, because it still hasn’t hit well, but green shoots can be seen,” he says. Mario Diaz, owner of the spectacular good retreat, a mansion in Chacaica, Güímar, which was the residence of the outstanding family of the Delgado-Trinidad family from Güimarera, Marquises of La Florida and a hotel in the 18th century, referring to the centenary dragon (more than 130 years of life) that he transplanted in August on his land after collapsing in the courtyard of the Nazaret school (today Santo Domingo), just a hundred meters away. Although he emphasizes that he is not a Catholic, it does not bother him that there is talk of a resurrection, of a botanical resurrection.
It must be remembered that technicians from the Cabildo de Tenerife considered it impossible to recover the drago on August 19, a month after the collapse it suffered in the schoolyard. They explained that it could no longer be saved due to biological problems and the damage caused by the fall in July, according to the insular councilor for Natural Environment Management and Security, Isabel García. So he was hopeless. Its destiny was to dry up, which is the death of vegetables.
The report compiled by the Cabildo stated that “transplanting a dragon tree with its root ball in good physiological condition is not the same as replanting a fallen dragon tree with serious pathologies and in an unfortunate state of conservation.” “Even the possible rooting of its arms is also very limited, given that the branches lack aerial roots, the experts added in that opinion.
However, a week later, at the end of August, Mario Díaz received the donation of the copy by the nuns and placed it, thanks to a huge crane, near the main garden of the former Buen Retiro hotel, now converted into a music museum. Precisely with violin music, Mario received the dragon tree from Nazareth, convinced that music would make him grow. And if it hasn’t grown, at least it hasn’t died.
“I don’t want to get into controversy with the technicians of the Cabildo, I just tried to make an effort to save the drago and for now it has been worth the effort, although it is still early, because although it is seen that it has begun to sprout, it is still the same it is not well rooted,” says Mario Díaz cautiously, who recounts that “at first I watered it, but I remembered that a botanist advised me not to do it, that the dragon tree does not carry water.”
In addition, the co-owner of the Buen Retiro, together with his sister Elsa, -his family acquired it three decades ago from the heir nephews of the Marchioness of Florida- has taken care to receive advice from prominent botanists, in a disinterested manner, such as Miguel Torres, who just two years ago saved from disappearance the well-known tree (esquisúchil) that Brother Pedro planted in 1657 during his stay in Guatemala, in addition to contracting the company Biogarden for the maintenance of this Dracaena Draco whose seed is the same as specimens such as that Mario Díaz already had in his mansion: “They are contemporaries, it would be said that they were brothers,” he highlights, recalling that his was planted by the Marchioness of La Florida before she died, without issue, in 1927.
The treatment that the Nazareth dragon tree has undergone from September to now has been none other than the natural and chemical hormones that have been implanted, first a chemical shock and then the natural one, “being very careful with the risks, which have to be counted, as they warned me with the brother next to me”, when “they advised me to remove the grass around it so that not so much water would reach it, because they tend to rot”, explains Díaz.
