El Sabinar of El Hierro: the tree the wind bent
There is a photograph that almost everyone who has had anything to do with El Hierro has seen. A tree that is not standing but lying down. The trunk turns at an angle, the branches point at the ground, and the whole thing looks as though somebody pushed it into the earth and it simply stayed there.
The first thought is always the same: this tree has been damaged.
It has not been damaged. It grew like that.
The difference is far bigger than it sounds. This is not a story about a storm breaking a tree that then survived. This is a tree that grew its whole life inside the shape of the wind, branch by branch, decade by decade, and the result is precisely the form that offers the least resistance.
Where it is
El Sabinar occupies the western end of El Hierro, in the municipality of La Frontera, inside the Frontera Rural Park. It is the island's only juniper wood, covering some 262 hectares, and there is nothing equivalent outside it.
Most of the trees are Canary juniper (Juniperus turbinata subsp. canariensis). It is an evergreen, heavily branched shrub or small tree that usually reaches four to six metres.
But on the La Dehesa plateau, where the trade wind blows without pause, these specimens do not grow upwards. Trunk and branches twist and take on what the literature calls the flag form: the crown combed entirely to one side, as though the tree were missing half of itself.
Why it does not snap
Here is the mechanism that makes sense of it all.
A tree that stands facing the wind is under tension with every gust. A tree that grows in the wind's direction is not under tension: it moves aside. Growth is slow, so the adaptation is not a decision but a sum. Every year adds a little more of the shape that is cheapest in that particular spot.
That is why it looks like bowing. It is not reverence, it is statics.
And it is why this shape cannot be produced anywhere else. A Canary juniper planted in a garden does not end up like this, because it has nothing to conform to. The form does not belong to the species. It belongs to the place.
What we know for certain
The juniper is the official plant symbol of El Hierro, and it appears on the coat of arms of the municipality of La Frontera. On the island it is named alongside the El Hierro giant lizard as one of the two living things by which the territory is recognised.
The extent and composition of the juniper wood are documented, protected, and part of the Frontera Rural Park. This is not a forgotten patch of wilderness but an inventoried, managed area.
What we do not know
And now the part the captions tend to leave out.
We do not know exactly how old these trees are. Dating junipers is difficult: the tree grows slowly, the trunk twists and often hollows, and regular ring counting frequently fails to give a reliable answer. The figures in circulation are usually estimates rather than measurements.
Nor do we know how representative the most famous specimen is. The tree in the photographs is an exceptionally dramatic form. How far that applies to the wood as a whole is something the images do not tell you, because they always show the same tree.
The distinction seems minor until you arrive and find that most of the trees are a good deal more restrained. The disappointment does not belong to the place. It belongs to the frame you brought with you.
If you go
Two things that are not decoration.
Do not climb on them, and do not stand on the roots. These are trees shaped by centuries of adaptation, with a shallow and fragile root system. The photograph you came for will still be there tomorrow if you do not tread on it today.
The wind does not pause for you. On the La Dehesa plateau the trade wind is the base state, not the forecast. Dress for standing in wind, not for strolling.
If you are planning the whole island, our piece on what to see in El Hierro puts the juniper wood into a day's route alongside the Mirador de la Peña and the Mar de las Calmas.
So what are you actually looking at
When you stand there, you are not looking at a pretty tree.
You are looking at the result of a negotiation lasting decades, in which one side never yielded and the other never stopped. The tree did not win, and it did not lose. It simply took on the shape in which it could remain.
Which leaves the question of whether that counts as defeat, when a tree has stood for four centuries without ever standing straight.
Cover photo: Desde un tajinaste, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
