At the far western edge of the world, in the garden of the Hesperides, grew a tree of golden apples — a wedding gift from Gaia to Hera herself. Guarding it, coiled endlessly around the trunk, was Ladon: a serpent-dragon with, in most accounts, a hundred heads, and not one of them ever slept.
Ladon's exact parentage varies across ancient sources — some name him a child of the primordial monsters Typhon and Echidna (the parents of most of Greek mythology's great monsters), others trace him instead to the sea deities Phorcys and Ceto, and still others describe him as born directly from Gaia. What ancient sources agree on more consistently is his form: a serpent with, in the most famous tradition, a hundred heads, each capable of speaking in a different voice — and a guardian who genuinely never slept, an incorruptible watch no thief could simply wait out.
The tree he guarded held apples that were themselves a wedding gift from Gaia to Hera on her marriage to Zeus, planted in the garden of the Hesperides — nymphs of the evening, tending the garden at the western horizon where the sun sets. The apples were protected doubly: by the Hesperides themselves, and by Ladon coiled around the trunk beneath them.
Retrieving the golden apples was assigned to Heracles as his eleventh labour. Ancient sources diverge on exactly how he accomplished it: in one version, Heracles kills Ladon directly with arrows poisoned by the Hydra's blood and takes the apples himself. In the more commonly cited version, Heracles instead enlists the Titan Atlas — condemned to hold up the sky — offering to bear the sky's weight himself temporarily while Atlas, whose daughters were the Hesperides, retrieves the apples on his behalf. Atlas, tempted by the prospect of permanent freedom, initially tries to leave Heracles holding the sky forever, but Heracles tricks him into briefly taking it back "just to adjust his cloak," and escapes with the apples.
Placed among the stars: in the version where Heracles kills Ladon directly, the gods honour the serpent's long, faithful guardianship after death by placing him among the stars as the constellation Draco — "the Dragon" — a genuinely traceable line from this myth straight into the modern night sky's own naming.
A structural echo worth noting, not a claimed connection: a serpent coiled around a tree, guarding forbidden or precious fruit in a paradisiacal garden, is a striking structural parallel to the Genesis account of Eden's serpent and the Tree of Knowledge. This reference notes the resemblance as an interesting comparative-mythology observation rather than asserting any direct historical influence between the two entirely separate traditions.