Random plant event: Dracaena reflexa flowers

The husband and I went up to Piersons last week because WCW told me that they were having their Annual Variable-Duration Post-Valentine's-Day 50%-Off Sale (henceforth AVDPVD50POS). I'd been up there once recently, in I think early January, and wasn't terribly impressed with what they had then -- it wasn't that it was bad stuff, it was just very normal stuff, and there wasn't a lot of it, and although I'd gone up there with the intention of buying something, as a show of support or whatever (they're still recovering from last summer's flooding), I just couldn't find anything then that I wanted to buy. This time I did, but we'll make a separate post out of that.

You'll probably have to click on the picture to see the buds.
Anyway. So the point of this post is, while we were there, I saw a Random Plant Event I hadn't witnessed before: they had a large Dracaena reflexa (formerly Pleomele reflexa) with flower buds all over it. None of the buds were open at the time, unfortunately, so I can't report on the smell. But even so.

I've never seen any other reflexa do this; I suppose the plant must have to be fairly old before it will flower. The plant in question was easily five feet tall, maybe six or seven, which would also make it the largest D. reflexa I've ever seen.


I wonder what it's like to be in the greenhouse when the flowers have opened. D. fragrans flowers are supposed to be pretty intense-smelling when open, to the point where some people have to cut off the flowers, or move the plant outside, in order to get any sleep at night. Personally, I've only experienced D. surculosa, and those didn't really have an odor at all for part of the day. Is D. reflexa more like fragrans or more like surculosa? I really would like to know.