Mediterranean to the south makes it popular with tourists in the winter and makes it ideal for the cultivation of palm trees. About 100,000 trees are exported from the area each year. As a result, the town is frequently referred to as Hyères-les-Palmiers (palmiers meaning palm trees). The three islands of the Îles d'Hyères (namely, Porquerolles, Port-Cros, and the Île du Levant) are just offshore. Porquerolles and Port-Cros form the Port-Cros National Park. The commune has a land area of . Climate The city of Hyères has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate (Köppen: Csa) and it is one of the warmest cities in France. Winters are relatively mild and summers are hot, with maximum temperatures often surpassing . It is also one of the driest cities in France, with barely 57 rainy days per year and almost rainless summers. Population British and Americans in Hyères, 18th to early 20th centuries Lord Albemarle, the British ambassador, stayed in Hyères during the winter 1767–1768, and Prince Augustus, sixth son of George III, stayed there in the winter of 1788 for health reasons. The English agronomist Arthur Young visited Hyères on the advice of Lady Craven on 10 September 1789. He mentioned the many British living there in his book Travels in France. The London-born and Eton-educated Anglo-Grison Charles de Salis died in Hyères in July 1781, aged 45, and was buried in the Convent des Cordeliers. In 1791, Charlotte Turner Smith published her novel Celestina, which is set in Hyères. During the period of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, the British left the area, but they returned after 1815. Joseph Conrad, who lived for a while in Hyères, wrote his novel The Rover, which is set in Hyères, during those years. William FitzRoy, 6th Duke of Grafton, spent the winter and spring each year at Hyères because he and his wife suffered from ill health. Edwin Lee M.D. published in 1857 a book on the virtues of the climate of Hyères for the recovery of pulmonary consumption and in November 1880 Adolphe Smith first published The Garden of Hyères, which is still in print, (see Hachette edition of 2012). In 1883, Robert Louis Stevenson came to Hyères and for about two years lived first at the Grand Hotel (the building still stands in the Avenue des Iles d'Or), and then in a chalet called Solitude in the present rue Victor-Basch. He