An island 380 km off the Arabian Peninsula that has been separated long enough to grow its own biology. Thirty-seven percent of the vascular plants, ninety percent of the reptiles and ninety-five percent of the land snails exist here and nowhere else on Earth. The one everybody knows is Dracaena cinnabari, the dragon’s blood tree, which holds its branches out in a flat umbrella against the sun and bleeds a bright red sap that has been traded commercially for centuries. The altitude bands each have their own conditions and therefore their own species, which is how so much endemism fits on one island. UNESCO World Heritage since 2008. Socotra Governorate, Yemen.
Socotra, Yemen
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