Ancient laurel forest in mountain mist

Go back 15 million years and you'll find most of Southern Europe looking like this fantasy forest – thick, scrubby underbrush canopied by wizened laurel trees. An epoch or two of human agricultural advances cleared those ancient woods, but patches persist on a few temperate Atlantic islands – especially here on Madeira, a Portuguese-held island off northwest Africa.
© Val Thoermer/Alamy