When I First Looked At These Pictures

I thought that they were not real trees,

but the figment of an artist's imagination, they looked, well, so strange,

but they are real, they live on the island of Socotra or Suqotra (Arabic سقطرى) it is a small archipelago of four islands and islets in the Indian Ocean near to Yemen, some 200 kilometers off the Horn of Africa, the climate is generally tropical desert, with rainfall being light, seasonal (winter) and more abundant at the higher ground in the interior than along the coastal lowlands, Socotra is one of the most isolated bits of land on earth, being of continental landmass origin (i.e., not of volcanic origin), the island probably detached from Africa as a fault block, in the same set of rifting events that have opened the Gulf of Aden to its west, the long geological isolation of the archipelago and its fierce heat and drought have combined to create a unique and spectacular endemic flora that would be highly vulnerable to change, surveys have revealed that more than a third of the 900 or so plant species of Socotra are found nowhere else in the world, so if you want to get away from it all in the Galapagos of the Indian Ocean, Socotra could be the place to visit next, p,s, we could do with a holiday if there are any spare seats going!