The evergreen decorative leaf dracaena grows very slowly and rarely blooms even in the wild (once every 10-12 years). The flower is a long paniculate inflorescence of many small flowers, which can be white, pink, red, green-yellow. Sometimes you shouldn't strive to create all the conditions for flowering at home, because the smell in many of its species is not just unpleasant, but also disgusting.
Dracaena (Greek "female dragon") is a tropical African plant from the asparagus family, which got its name for its ability to release cadmium, which has a dark red color, when damaged. There are many legends about this, but they all boil down to one thing - the plant originated exactly where the dragon's blood was shed.
Dracaena is found in the wild in South America, the Canary Islands, and India. True, there are only a few species outside the African continent, when a total of about 150 of them are found. Conventionally, this number can be divided into shrubs and tree-like ones. Among those and others there are dracaena, which have an external resemblance to palm trees, for which many gardeners mistakenly call them that.
How wild dracaena bloom
Dracaena refers to decorative leafy flowers. Therefore, when it comes to its varieties, experts describe the shape and color of the leaves more than the beauty of the peduncles. Indeed, dracaena leaves can be bright or dark green, differ in a variety of specks, veins, have an oval or pointed shape.
Dracaena blooms very rarely. This happens once every 10-12 years, or even less often. For example, the cinnabar-red dracaena, which belongs to the relict shrubs of the Cretaceous period, can bloom after a quarter of a century. Due to such a rare occurrence, flowers do not represent any particular decorative value.
Dracaena flower stalk is a variety of pink, greenish or white flowers, collected in one paniculate inflorescence. You can see this rarity only at night, because it is at this time of the day that they open up, attracting nocturnal flying inhabitants with an abundance of fragrant nectar. It is extremely difficult to call it a scent, because rare species of dracaena smell nice. Even if the aroma is honey, it is very sharp. Some flowers generally have a heavy, repulsive odor.
The flower is bisexual, the perianth of which reaches a length of half a meter, because it consists of separate segments connected into one tube, which occupies 1/3 of the corolla. The ovary is three-celled, where one round seed resembling a pea forms and matures in each nest.
It is believed that dracaena live for more than one millennium, so they are in no hurry to show all their capabilities. After the first flowering, the trunk begins to expand and coarse to such an extent that the shrub becomes like a tree. Further, every year, not growth is noted, but expansion of the dracaena in the circumference of the trunk. The tree-like dracaena called "dragon tree" is distinguished by its gigantic dimensions both in height and in the width of the trunk. The largest dracaena of this species is located on the island of Tenerife, in the Canary Islands. Its height is 21 m, and its diameter is 4.
Dracaena bloom at home
For keeping at home, a dragon tree has also been bred, but its dimensions are much more modest - 1.5 meters in height. There are only 7 cultivated species:
- deremskaya blooms once every 7-10 years, it is distinguished by two-color flowers, bright red outside and white inside;
- fragrant blooms with white or yellow-green flowers with a pleasant aroma;
- Godsefa has greenish-yellow flowers and is more prone to flowering than other species, it can bloom even if it is located on a window facing the North;
- Sandera blooms in nature with small pink flowers, which practically no one has seen at home;
- unfolded has in nature panicle inflorescences with red flowers, exuding a disgusting odor;
- fringed dracaena in the wild blooms with green flowers with a white border, but indoors, flowering for her is a rare exception;
- the dragon tree also practically does not bloom at home, but if this happens, then you need to expect white flowers.
Everyone who has a dracaena at home is more concerned with the problem of the integrity of the leaves, their protection from diseases and pests, because the decorativeness of the plant depends on their condition. Almost no one expects flowering from her, and if this happens, then the owners will certainly try to capture this miracle in the photo. There may not be another good moment for this.
