I kept the posts going but for the past two weeks I have been on the annual holiday, to Gran Canaria again. There were posts last year so I won’t repeat myself too much (you can find the older posts to the right or search for Gran Canaria). What was different this year was that we spent the first four days in a ‘cottage’ in the mountains near Teror, a result of visiting the town last year and agreeing with general opinions about it being a delightful place to visit. We stayed at Los Arbejales, a few kilometres south of Teror. It is a one-horse town with a church, of course, the Ermita del Corazón de Jesús.

Apart from this the town has very little to offer tourists, with a small shop and a bar. But it has a local population that grow some potatoes under the orange trees.

The cottage was rustic! But not quite as isolated as I had hoped and overlooked the valley. The north of the island is usually wetter than the more popular south and we arrived in rain and the next few days were overcast but the day after we arrived we decided to walk to Teror.

But I left the timelapse on to see what the weather would do back at base.

One of the curses of the island is Bermuda buttercup (Oxalis pes-caprae). This really attractive plants from South Africa is weedy in many frost-free areas of the world and, since it produces lots of bulbils, it spreads dramatically in cultivated soils where the ground is disturbed and the bulbs distributed. It is such a shame since it is a beautiful plant but it must be planted with care where it could go feral. It is not hardy in the UK. Here it is seen at the edge of a field growing with fumitory.

Opuntias too are remnants of cultivation, often seen with chasmanthe, another South African bulb, that seems to thrive but never stray for from where it was originally planted. This plant can be cultivated in the UK with care, in mild areas.

chasmanthe, Gran Canaria, los arbejales, Oxalis pes-caprae, Teror