Sunday, May 9, 2010

Random plant event: Dracaena reflexa 'Riki' flower buds

Dracaenas tend not to flower in containers; I've run into, and posted about, flowers on D. deremensis 'Janet Craig' (link), D. surculosa (link), and D. reflexa (link) in the past, but I've never seen flowers on D. sanderiana, D. marginata, or D. fragrans before (though flowers on D. fragrans happen fairly often, just never when I'm around: I get the impression that they're more or less inevitable once a plant reaches a certain size and age).

I'd never seen them on D. reflexa 'Riki' before, which is not surprising, since the plant hasn't existed for very long. I was, unfortunately, a little too early still to catch the actual flowers on this particular specimen at the ex-job, but I now know what the buds look like:


This was about a week ago; I'll check up on the plant the next time I'm in town and see if they've opened yet. I'm especially interested in the smell: I hear the smell of Dracaena flowers described a lot, but the only ones I've ever personally experienced were those of D. surculosa. Hopefully the plant will still be around; when I was actually working there, plants doing interesting things tended to sell before I could see them finish.


1 comment:

Liza said...

I'm not fond of Dracaena flowers - they're sticky and ugly. Maybe I should be a little less harsh. Hmm.