#boraginaceae

When we were driving to the holiday house in Oamaru, I got *very* distracted by this growing in the cemetery. I may have exclaimed "what the HELL is that?".

First described by French naturalist Sabin Berthelot (1794 – 1880) and English Botanist Philip Barker Webb (1793 – 1854), co-authors of L'Histoire Naturelle des Îles Canaries. It's endemic to La Palma, in the Canary Islands, but is threatened with extinction there because of the clearing of the laurel forests in which it grows. However, it has been introduced to France, Great Britain, Ireland, California and New Zealand. I also saw it growing on a cliff on Rakiura Stewart Island, later in the trip.

'pininana' means 'small pine' but of course it isn't a conifer. It is, in fact, in the same genus as the notorious weed Paterson's Curse, Echium plantagineum, and many other plants, but this one apparently decided that the path to success was investing everything in the flowerspike. The Monarch butterflies and bumblebees certainly agreed.

The flowerspike, which grows in the second or third year of the plant's life, can be 4m tall and produce 200,000 seeds. The plant then dies.