Tenerife herbs: Canary Candle Shrub

Canary Candle Shrub (Kleinia neriifolia) is a common sight growing both wild and cultivated for its ornamental quality in gardens, parks and flower borders. It is a succulent plant that can grow as high as 3 metres and forms small bushes.

Canary Candle Shrub is also known as Senecio kleinia and is a member of the Compositae or Asteraceae family. In Spanish it is called Verol or Verode.

Canary Candle Shrub grows wild on Tenerife as well as all of the other Canary Islands and is found growing in dry rocky and semi-desert areas as well as on waste ground and in coastal regions. Its seeds are distributed by the wind and born on fluffy hairs. It readily germinates in all sorts of places including walls and on cliffs.

Canary Candle Shrub has a trunk and succulent stems in jointed segments. These bear lance-shaped leaves in autumn, winter and spring, as well as umbel-like tufts of yellow flowers. 

After flowering and setting seed the plant tends to drop its leaves and aestivate over the hot summer months. Its bare succulent stems are often carried in a candelabra-shaped bush and give rise to its name of Candle Shrub. 

Other related succulent species of Kleina are often grown by collectors of cacti and succulent plants.

Canary Candle Shrub has wound healing properties. Its fleshy stems are cut open and applied directly over any wounded part of the body or bound in place. The stems can also be crushed to make the juice ooze out and then used as a poultice.

Canary Candle Shrub has anti-irritant and anti-inflammatory properties too. In traditional Canary Island folk medicine it has been used as an antidote for the burns caused by the latex of species in the Euphorbia family such as the succulent cacti-form Canary Spurge or Cardón (Euphorbia canariensis).

Canary Candle Shrub is an attractive plant that adds its own exotic appeal to the islands' countryside locations.

Copyright © 2011 Steve Andrews. All Rights Reserved.