Echium pininana Webb & Berthel.

Giant Bugloss, Giant Viper's-Bugloss, Giant Viper's-bugloss (EN), Pine Echium

Climate known 54 photographs

Every figure on this page is derived from public data by a stated rule and says its source; nothing here is written by a person or a model, except the Wikipedia passage, which is quoted and marked as such. How it is made.

Summary

Echium pininana, commonly known as the tree echium, pine echium, giant viper's-bugloss, or tower of jewels, is a species of flowering plant in the borage family Boraginaceae. It is endemic to the Canary Islands, where it is restricted to the island of La Palma. Echium pininana is an endangered species, and is listed in Appendix I to, and is therefore protected under, the Convention on the Conservation of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats. The specific epithet pininana is Latin for "small pine", though E. pininana is neither closely related to the pine, nor does it resemble that plant.

Text from Wikipedia, “Echium pininana”, CC BY-SA 4.0, quoted as written. Kept separate from everything derived here.

About the genus · Echium

Echium is a genus of flowering plants in the family Boraginaceae that contains about 70 species and several subspecies.

Text from Wikipedia, “Echium”, CC BY-SA 4.0, quoted as written.

Family

Boraginaceae

Described by

Webb & Berthel.

Native to

Ireland, Canary Is.

Wild records

98 in range· 29 open

At a glance

Warmest month

18°C

Jul, mean day; nights 13 °C (CHELSA)

Rain

1039mm/yr

12 wet months · peak Oct 113 mm (CHELSA)

Light

4–34DLI

mol/m²/day, winter to summer, open sky (CHELSA shortwave)

In short condensed by rule from the cultivation cards · not written by a person

Rain rule: no season, 70% of the rain takes 8 months (August to March in the northern hemisphere). Habitat rain 1039 mm a year, wettest October at 113 mm, driest April at 68 mm (habitat calendar, northern hemisphere). Open sky over the habitat: 4 to 34 mol/m²/day. Cold floor 0.3 °C (1st-percentile habitat night, NASA POWER).

Each sentence is one card's own one-line form, written by the same rule as the card (Its year, Rain, Light, Temperature); the note cannot say what a card does not. Months are given for the northern hemisphere (set your site in Settings to change this), and the habitat's own alongside. The cards · the figures.

Cultivation

Its year Rain rule: no season, 70% of the rain takes 8 months (August to March in the northern hemisphere).

This species’ habitat figures, and what two fixed rules read from them.

The rain rule reads no season: 70% of the year's rain (754 mm of 1039 mm) takes 8 months, August to March. Mean temperature moves 9.4 °C between the warmest and coldest month. Months are the habitat's, northern hemisphere; shifted six months for a southern-hemisphere collection: February to September.

Read from the median year of CHELSA monthly rainfall and mean temperature across the envelope cells: the rain rule takes the smallest set of months carrying 70% of the rain and calls it winter when its mean is more than half a degree below the year's, summer when more than that above, and neither in between; the temperature rule, used only under 120 mm, names the cooler six months when they are at least a degree cooler than the other six. Months are shifted for the other hemisphere only where the temperature curve gives a season to reverse. A reading of the curves, not an observation of the plant.

Rain Habitat rain 1039 mm a year, wettest October at 113 mm, driest April at 68 mm (habitat calendar, northern hemisphere).

This species’ habitat figures, with their source.

1039 mm a year at the habitat, 754 mm of it August to March. Wettest month October at 113 mm, driest April at 68 mm. Across the envelope cells the year's total runs 857 mm to 1311 mm (10th to 90th percentile of each cell's own year) (median year across the envelope cells, CHELSA; habitat calendar, northern hemisphere).

CHELSA monthly precipitation, median year across the envelope cells. The rain that falls where the species is recorded; nothing about how the plant takes water.

Light Open sky over the habitat: 4 to 34 mol/m²/day.

This species’ habitat figures, with their source.

Open sky over the habitat: 4 to 34 mol/m²/day across the year (daily light integral, median year across the envelope cells, CHELSA; the lowest 10th-percentile month across the cells is 3, the highest 90th-percentile month 36).

CHELSA shortwave radiation at each envelope cell, a daily-mean flux taken to a daily total and converted at 2.07 mol of PAR per MJ. The sky over the habitat, measured; what reaches a plant under a rock, a shrub or a shade cloth is not.

Warmth and air Cold floor 0.3 °C (1st-percentile habitat night, NASA POWER).

This species’ habitat figures, with their source.

Temperature

Coldest: the 1st-percentile night over 44 years at the typical cell is 0.3 °C, the absolute minimum -4.2 °C, about 2 frost nights a year (NASA POWER daily minima). Warmest: the 99th-percentile day is 21.3 °C. Monthly means: coldest night 4.0 °C in February (across the envelope cells 3.0 °C to 5.8 °C), warmest day 17.7 °C in July (median year across the envelope cells, CHELSA). Cold floor: 0.3 °C, which is the 1st-percentile night over 44 years at the typical cell (NASA POWER).

NASA POWER daily minima and maxima 1981–2024 at the typical cell, lapse-corrected to its elevation; CHELSA monthly means, median year across the envelope cells, CHELSA. The cold floor is the figure named in its sentence. Not a measured survival limit for any plant in a pot.

Humidity

Relative humidity at the habitat: 62 to 66% across the year (monthly means, median year across the envelope cells, CHELSA). A figure about the air, saying nothing about how the plant takes water.

CHELSA relative humidity, median year across the envelope cells.

The figures the cards read from are in Climate below, and where they came from in Natural habitat.

Climate across the habitat

day night rain 10th–90th percentile across 42 habitat cells cold quarter: the three months around the coldest night extremes over 44 years at the typical cell, marked at the edge: undated DLI, mol/m²/dayRH %each on its own scale

Figures by month

	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
Day °C	8 / 7–9	8 / 7–9	9 / 8–10	11 / 9–12	13 / 12–15	16 / 14–17	18 / 16–19	18 / 16–18	16 / 15–16	13 / 12–14	10 / 9–11	8 / 7–10
Night °C	4 / 3–6	4 / 3–6	5 / 4–7	6 / 5–7	8 / 8–10	11 / 10–12	13 / 12–14	13 / 12–14	12 / 11–13	9 / 8–11	7 / 5–9	5 / 4–7
Rain mm	98 / 81–135	79 / 64–103	80 / 70–108	68 / 58–84	76 / 63–87	73 / 66–86	68 / 60–87	81 / 72–105	83 / 69–111	113 / 91–146	109 / 93–133	111 / 89–143
DLI	5 / 4–6	9 / 8–10	17 / 15–18	27 / 25–29	34 / 31–35	34 / 31–36	31 / 28–34	26 / 23–29	19 / 17–21	11 / 10–12	6 / 5–7	4 / 3–5
RH %	65 / 64–67	64 / 63–65	63 / 63–64	63 / 62–64	62 / 61–64	63 / 62–65	63 / 62–66	64 / 63–66	64 / 64–66	65 / 64–66	65 / 64–67	66 / 64–68

Each figure is the median across the 42 grid cells holding the 84 in-range records, with the 10th–90th percentile span across those cells after the slash where it differs. Extremes and elevation were read at the typical cell 737:3478 (53.125, -6.075). Over 44 years there: absolute minimum -4.2 °C, 1st-percentile night 0.3 °C, 99th-percentile day 21.3 °C. Normals: CHELSA V2.1 1981–2010 climatology, 0.05° cells (each the mean of ~36 1 km pixels). Envelope: median and 10th–90th percentile of each month across the 42 distinct grid cells holding the 84 in-range records; extremes and elevation at the typical cell 737:3478 (its coldest month's mean night nearest the median across cells); its position is the cell centre. Extremes: NASA POWER (MERRA-2) daily 1981–2024, cell 53.00_-6.250, lapse-corrected -65 m at 6.5 °C/km. Elevation: ETOPO 2022, 44 m (cell mean).

Natural habitat

Native range as published by WCVP; the marker is where the records are densest and decides nothing: the climate was read across every in-range record's cell, not at the marker.

Openly licensed records inside the range, framed on where they fall.

NativeIreland, Canary Is.· introduced: Great Britain, France, New Zealand North, New Zealand South

Kew's description“biennial or subshrub” · “subtropical”· quoted from WCVP, RBG Kew (CC BY 4.0); not derived here

Map marker53.363, -6.072 · in the densest population, 63 records (64% of those in range)

Evidence usedThe map marker and the climate envelope rest on all 98 georeferenced records inside the native range; the map shows only the 29 openly licensed ones, which alone would put the marker 3 km away. 1098 records outside the range (gardens, roadsides, misidentifications) ignored. 14 in-range records are placed to worse than 10 km and stay on the map but off the climate.

The map markerthe map marker: the openly licensed record nearest the middle of the densest 1° population of the 98 in-range records; it decides nothing.

Photographs

Photographs: (c) Jon Mortin, some rights reserved (CC BY); (c) Sue Carnahan, some rights reserved (CC BY) (2); no rights reserved · CC0 (4); (c) Alan Prather, some rights reserved (CC BY).

Photographs: iNaturalist did not answer when this page was built; what is shown came from the sources that did.

Papers naming this species

Works whose title or abstract names Echium pininana, most cited first, from OpenAlex (CC0). A mention, not a cultivation source: nothing on this page is drawn from them.

Restricted‐Range Boraginaceae Species Constitute Potential Sources of Valuable Fatty Acids

José Luis Guil‐Guerrero, Francisco Gómez Mercado, Rebeca P. Ramos‐Bueno, Miguel Ángel Rincón‐Cervera (2013) · Journal of the American Oil Chemists Society

Pyrrolizidine alkaloids from Echium pininana

E. Roeder, K. Liu, Thomas Bourauel (1991) · Phytochemistry

Occurrence Download