Sunday, November 4, 2007

Random plant event: Dracaena surculosa flowers

This started happening a while ago; the first flowers of the Dracaena surculosa opened on Friday. I had been looking forward to this since seeing buds, because I'd seen a few things that said that the flowers smell like airplane glue, which seemed like a weird enough occasion (even though I don't necessarily like the smell of airplane glue) to be worth looking forward to. Glasshouse Works, in fact, enthuses about it, promising "easy to bloom indoors for an overpowering airplane glue 'fragrance!'"

So far, I would question "overpowering." And "airplane glue" doesn't seem quite right either. Points for getting "fragrance" right, but then there's "easy to bloom indoors," which is true to the extent that I didn't do anything to make this happen, but false to the degree that this is the only one I've seen happen personally, and that includes the many, many plants at work. So really, Glasshouse Works is kind of full of shit, I think, but I kind of suspected that already.1

Searching the net turns up reports of fragrance and reports of odorlessness in about equal number. I think I can maybe explain this, though: the intensity of fragrance varies a lot with the time of day. At 6 PM, almost odorless (maybe a very faint solvent / rubber cement / model glue smell, though that could be because I was expecting one). At 9 PM, a pretty intense (but hardly room-permeating) generic perfumey floral smell. This morning at what would have been 6 AM,2 we're back to basically odorless.


In any case, here's what they look like: it's new, so I'm sharing. For some reason they come out yellowish in the picture, but they're actually pure white. Some of the reports say that the flowers (and the berries as well, should any form later on) are sticky. Don't see that yet, but I'll keep you informed.

-

Photo credit: me, obviously.


1It'd be a little weird if someone who could get that excited about the smell of airplane glue wasn't a little bit off in some way or another, frankly.
2Damn daylight saving time all to hell. I mean it. I hate daylight saving time.


5 comments:

Aiyana said...

You always have such interesting posts. I enjoy visiting your blog!
Aiyana

Anonymous said...

Aha! I just bought one at Walmart for $1.50. (small) but now it's on notice. Blooms are expected, they can even look yellow, but are definitely expected. Will trade water and light. Have named it Zippo. Many things are possible, most however, are not.
Thomas

Anonymous said...

Did you ever get any berries/seeds?

mr_subjunctive said...

Anonymous:

Nope.

Unknown said...

Thank you for this blog! I've had my plant for about 5 years, it's had 2 homes, 4 pots and several different levels of sunlight. And 2 days ago it started blooming. Tonight my guy noticed a "nail polish" scent in the plant area and as I investigated I realized the source was the single, weird bloom in my plant friend. So glad he's not crazy as I secretly suspected