If you come to Gran Canaria and want something more than sun and beaches, I recommend a visit to the botanical garden of Las Palmas "Viera y Clavijo, which is is located on a slope of the Barranco Guiniguada. It got its name from the Spanish author, botanist and historian Don José Viera y Clavijo, who made the first attempts at starting the garden here. The botanical garden was opened in 1952, its first director was the Swedish botanist Swedish botanist Erik Ragnar Svensson (Eric Ragnor Sventenius, who proposed creating a botanical garden dedicated to Canarian flora, but the garden has a lot more than that.
The Jardin Botanico is large, around 27 hectars, with a flat part at the bottom, a steep hillside with dense vegetation, and a plateau at the top, 100 m higher up, where there is also a restaurant. There are entrances both at the bottom and from the top. There are more than 2000 plant species, 500 of them endemic to the Canary Islands. There are several divisions, the Jardín de las Islas with endemic plants, Jardín de Cactus y Suculentas (with around 10,000 cultivars of succulents), a Macaronesian ornamental garden, a hidden garden, a pine forest and a laurel-leaved garden. There are also several ponds, an old aqueduct, and of course a lot of palms, euphorbias, echiums and dragon trees.
Unfortunately, there was no written information for sale anywhere, what you find on the internet rather limited, but the plants in garden were fairly well labelled, at least in the bottom part.
I warn you though, this is not a place for disabled people, the many winding paths up the hill are narrow and steep, I heard some visitors who refused to walk the hill because of fear of heights.
_Z010405 Jardin Canario.jpg by
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_Z010411 Aqueduct Jardin Canario.jpg by
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_Z010421 Jardin Canario.jpg by
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_Z010423 Echium.jpg by
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_Z010430 Aeonium arboreum in flower.jpg by
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_Z050674 'El arco del viento'.jpg by
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_Z010434 Euphorbia canariensis.jpg by
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_Z010445 Dracaena cinnabari.jpg by
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_Z010447Cacti and succulents.jpg by
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_Z010453 Aloe mcloughlinii.jpg by
JorunT, on Flickr