Tree-Dragon Blood Pink

I maintain records on my trackables. They have the goal to circulate more than five years and to be moved by more than 25 cachers. That is a target rate of five drops per year for five years, or a drop every 73 days. The past average drop rate of my trackables in the US is 115 days, in Europe it is 69 days. Please keep it moving.

If in the US, please drop it in a Premium Member only OR a rural cache near a busy trail or road. Do not place it in an urban cache or abandon it at a caching event where there is no security. Transport the bug in the original plastic bag for as long as the bag lasts; the bag keeps the trackable clean and dry, protects the number and prevents tangling with other items. Otherwise, take the trackable anywhere you wish.

A wooden ring to a tree ring to a tree seems like a logical sequence. Whatever the case, this TB is one of a series of wooden rings named for famous or unusual trees.

The Socotra dragon tree or dragon blood tree (Dracaena cinnabari), is native to the Socotra archipelago in the Indian Ocean. It is so called because of the red sap that the trees produce. It has a unique and strange appearance, described as "upturned, densely packed crown having the shape of an uprightly held umbrella". Its leaves are only found at the end of its youngest branches, their leaves are all shed every 3 or 4 years before new leaves simultaneously mature.

Human activities have greatly reduced the dragon’s blood population through overgrazing, and feeding the flowers and fruits to the livestock of the island. One of the species' greatest threats is the gradual drying out of the Socotra Archipelago, which has been an ongoing process for the last few hundred years. This has resulted in non flourishing trees, and the duration of the mist and cloud around the area seems to also be decreasing. Increasing arid environments is predicted to cause a 45 percent reduction in the available habitat by the year 2080.

Additional threats to the dragon's blood tree include harvesting of its resin and use of the leaves to make rope. Presently some of the dragon’s blood trees have been used to make beehives. This was generally prohibited; this displays how the species may be threatened by a breakdown in the traditional practices of the island.