Tenerife Botanical Garden Tour - so many PLANT STORIES!

Hi everybody! Today we're here in beautiful Tenerife and I'm very excited because we're going to be looking at two botanical gardens together and I really want to take you along with me. So let's go! Okay you guys, so we have arrived to Jardines y Fuera del Botanico here in La Orotava in Tenerife and I'm so excited because they have so much information about so many plants here in the island. So yeah, let's go inside. You guys, look at this tree. This is a ficus aspera and it comes all the way from Vanuatu which is another island in the Pacific Ocean and right now we're in the Atlantic Ocean and we can see it right now. It is such a beautiful tree, you guys. As you can see, the leaves are almost like they're splashed with paint. They have some kind of variegation that I've never seen before. It's kind of like drops just splashing of green paint on very beige leaves. And also this tree is called higuera payaso. Payaso in Spanish means clown. I didn't know exactly why this is the clown fic, but if you look at the fruits here, they actually look like a clown's nose. So I thought maybe this may be the reason. Also you can see that the colors are super nice. We have red, we have green and yellow. It's such a beautiful tree and the fruit is really really different. I've never seen it before. So yeah, I'm very happy that we found it. A tree that comes from Vanuatu in the Atlantic. Now, if you know the reason why this tree may be called the clown fic, make sure to comment your reasons below and maybe we can find the reason together. My friends, we have found the dracina draco over here. This one reminds me a little bit of the one that we have at home, but the one that we have at home is really small. As you can see, this one is super big. And one thing that I love about this tree is that at least we know that there is one here on this island that is 600 years old. Can you believe that? Oh my god. Also, I really like it because it comes from Canarias. So this tree here is actually from these islands from the Atlantic and I'm so happy that we could see it in its natural habitat. So yeah, I'm happy that I can share it with you. Oh my god, look at the leaves that I got here. They're so big. It's so big. This one is an alocasia. So we have many in the house and I'm sure that you may have some in your house because it's a very popular plant. As a house plant, for example, I have the alocasia, the poly, and also you can find different types of alocasias at home. You can tell me if you have one in the comments. This one is the alocasia odora. And as you can see, the leaves are just so big and beautiful. I really like the veins too because they are really pronounced on the leaf. So it's a beautiful plant. Also, these flowers here are actually my mom's favorite flowers, so I'm so happy that I could find them here. They're so pretty, no? They grow like this and yeah, they just remind me so much of my home in Mexico because we used to have so many of them in Guadalajara, in my city, and yeah, my mom used to love them. So yeah, every time that I see them it makes me really happy. And talking about how plants can make you feel like home, look at what I found here. These are bromeliads and I don't know if you remember when we were in Toronto and we went to the Allen Gardens. In those gardens they have so many of these ones, so it was so nice to find them here in another island, a completely different location. But you know, it reminds me of how nature really makes you feel like home. Like wherever you are you can find different plants that remind you of the places that are close to your heart. So yeah, I'm so happy that I could show you this one here. Okay, here I found one that is so popular to have it at home, the Norfolk Pine. But when I see them at home in different houses I have been to, they're always very small and this was so impressive to see how big it can grow outside. You know, I haven't seen it so often because this one actually comes from Australia, but it's so cool to see how big it can grow, you know? And of course this makes us think how sunlight and light is so important for our plants because that's how they get the energy to grow. So this one is getting all of the things that it needs to grow so tall and strong. It's really impressive. And this is something that I love about being in a botanical garden that you can find a plant that comes from Australia and right besides it something that comes from Mexico. This is a palm tree that comes from my home country and as you can see it is so tall and it is such a clear reminder of how grand nature actually is. You guys, we're actually standing right below the flower of the banana tree and this tree is very special because it's not any kind of banana. This is actually called the plantain. In Spanish we call it the plátano macho and it's very popular in South America even though I just discovered that this one here comes from India. We use this plantain in South America to cook so we actually fry it sometimes and put some salt or pico de gallo or cream cheese and we eat it like that. But now I just saw the plantains here and they look really small so this may be another species. As you can see they grow right on top of the flower so yeah it's very interesting to see it here actually right in nature. We have arrived to the botanical garden of Puerto de la Cruz here in Tenerife and I'm so excited I have my map here so we can look at all of the plants and we're going to start with one that is really exciting me because we started with this one also in Toronto in the botanical garden that we visited. This one is the Spanish moss and it's so as you can see it lives on the tree it doesn't have any roots or anything like this so they get all of the things that they need from the air and from the trunk of the tree and we also have it in our house as a house plant so it's really nice to see it in nature just thriving here. We also found some plants here that are just like the Spanish moss. These plants are actually called epiphytes so this means that they don't need to be in the soil their roots are actually attached to this trunk so this one for example is a staghorn fern we have some Spanish moss over here and then I think those are some bromeliads maybe and a monstera. As you can see the monstera is right on the trunk so it's super cool to actually see all of these plants growing on the trunk they're actually not in the soil which is really interesting. Guys can you see here this is a paradise of ferns as you can see we have some ferns here some on the side this is the spade fern for example this one I think it reminds me so much of the Boston fern so I think it may be that one. We also have some here this actually looks like the maiden's herb fern or something like this but yeah it's actually growing from the rocks this one looks a little bit more like the platycerium fern remember this one we have things we have ferns like this as a house plant too but as you can see here it's thriving because here I can tell you it feels really humid and I'm sure that these ferns get lots of really good sunlight. It smells so nice it smells like the jungle like humidity but also so much life to see green everywhere and also some other colors like this one this is red green see right here bromeliceae that's the name of the family and they have all of these flowers that are so red or pink they're like super fascinating color I think they're really pretty and also look this is also from the same family it looks more like a succulent and it reminds me more of aloe but it's actually also a bromeliad oh my god you guys I just found something that I have been seeing in pictures and other like places in the internet but never in real life so now that I've that I found it I really wanted to show you this actually an eucalyptus tree but in Spanish it's called árbol aquiris which means tree well rainbow tree basically and this is because look at the trunk it actually has many colors on the trunk it's so beautiful and actually if you were here you would see that it almost shines a little bit so it's like kind of like velvety kind of look so oh it's so beautiful I'm so happy that I could see it and now I can share with you I want to share with you guys that since I started collecting plants I've been trying to learn the names for these plants and it's really interesting because right now I saw this plant I'm like oh maybe this is a set plant because it looks really similar but no as you can see here it's called samia furfuracea but if you look at the name of the and it's from Veracruz Mexico I just learned that so it's from my home country we keep finding really cool plants here and I wanted to show you this one this is actually a jackfruit so I can tell you that I have seen the jackfruit only online and one time we had it in a taco but actually not the jackfruit itself so now we can see it here and it's so it's so interesting actually I've never seen a fruit so big or maybe I don't know a watermelon or something like this but even the texture of the fruit is really it's really different than what I've seen before also the tree is really nice it reminds me a little bit of a ficus if you look at the leaves and we have found another plant from the samia sae family as you can see this one right here and I wanted to show you because it's the same family but as you can see it's a very different plant and it almost looks like a pineapple right it's so different but it's from the same family oh one tip that I can give you because I see so many spider plants here and as you can see they're thriving because they have all of these babies right here if you have a spider plant at home and you see that it's producing pups like this one all you have to do is cut right here and then you plant it in soil and then you will have a new plant isn't that really cool and I actually thought about that because I see these fire plants and they're really happy and thriving here so yeah I hope that yours is like that too at home this is so cool we just found this tree right here and they call her the 100 years of solitude because for 100 years she was by herself and she didn't have any other male to pollinate and to reproduce until another lone male here in this botanical garden helped her and then reproduce to make more of these palm trees but it's such a wonderful romantic story guys we have arrived to the queen of this botanical garden and it's this one right here first of all let me tell you this is one tree only but it looks like many trees because it has roots growing from the top all the way down to the ground and then they get thicker and thicker so they look like trunks but they are actually roots and you know this is so beautiful to see because first of all you can see this is a magnificent tree because trees are magnificent right let's just say that but on top of that I think that the roots are so meaningful at least for me because I'm learning so much about trees now and how they're so social and how they communicate through their roots so seeing how majestic the roots of this tree are is just so wonderful and we're back to this forest on this beautiful mountain I just wanted to thank you so much for watching with me seriously it feels like you're right here with me just in case you didn't know we also have a patreon page where we meet twice a month we talk about our plans and then we also have a book club on nature where we discuss our place on this planet the conversations get a little bit more just deeper and more emotional so I hope that you can join us there you will also be supporting this project right here so thank you so much if you want to check it out just check out this link right here and yeah if you have any comments let's keep the conversation going down below and as always I will see you in the next one okay adios