Damien Enright: Miracle tree tagasaste can turn desert into arable land

The farmer who dropped by to give unasked-for advice to my friend and his wife clearing their newly bought quarter of an acre of long, abandoned terraces on a steep slope on the island of La Gomera in the Canaries was unequivocal: “Cut it down!”

Being ‘estranjeros’, poor Irish innocents, they had received a lot of well-intentioned advice from local agriculturists most of it useful, although some of it stating the bleedin’ obvious such as “the policia local will be after you if ever you cut a Canarian palm”.