marginate dracaena

order: asparagales
family: asparagaceae/dracaenaceae
genus: dracaena
species: marginata

First Story

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12 february 2012

Dracaenas have been one of the overly popular houseplants. Still, they have their certain charm which I'm still trying to identify. This particular species, as the name implies, has got long narrow leaves with thin red margins. The 'tricolor' cultivar has extra white stripes along the red margins.

This is an easy plant to grow. So there's not much to tell about its maintenance. Just keep it at a bright corner of the house away from hot sun and dry air, and it will be happy.

As I got this plant, the base of the trunk has been pushed very deeply into the soil, so the roots only took the space in the bottom third of the total soil depth. The top soil remained moist most of the time, while the roots underneath had already dried up. If left this way, it could lead to fungal growth or a breeding site for undesired insects. So I pulled the plant out of its pot, scraped the top soil off it until I could see the trunk base, moved the soil to the bottom of the pot and replanted the plant on top of it. Now the top soil layer dries up a lot quicker between watering, and the plant makes use of the space underneath for its roots. After repotting the main trunk looks as if it has suddenly stretched as much as 100% from its original length.

Update

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15 april 2012

I got this plant a new pot. White glazed pot. It's bigger than the previous pot. Wider, not taller; so that it's more stable and the plant doesn't topple over easily. It should be big enough for a while. Let's see how fast this plant is going to grow.

Update

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25 august 2015

It's time for an update on this plant, since it has grown quite a lot in the past few years. It has become too big for its former pot, so I got it a new one, which got broken only after a short while by I don't remember what and which I am yet to repair. The three leads have grown between some 30 to 40 cm, with one significantly shorter than the other two. The newest leaf at the top is attached to the trunk at 60 cm and its tip pointing at nearly 1 m above soil level. Leaves are now longer than they were at the beginning. Older leaves are persistent on the trunk, hanging lowly and touching the soil. At first I was happy with this look, thinking this is the healthiest it can get with all the nutrients and moisture. But when I looked at the plants in their natural habitats, I realised they don't get all that much nutrients. The natural look is one of which lower leaves are shed much sooner and leaves are a lot shorter and pointier. A tree can have visible trunks and many branches and with each branch ending with a nice rosette forming whorls of leaves. (see example) This natural look is definitely more charming.

Frankly, trunk movement, as minimal as it is, has become boring for me. There's no further branching along the three leads. They grow too closely together, making the canopies optically indistinguishable, let alone forming the handsome rosettes. I am thankful though that they grow at different speed and hopeful that the height of the canopies will become more varied with time. I probably won't cut down on water and fertiliser just yet, because my primary goal presently is for its trunk to thicken in order for it to become a more convincing specimen. Maybe in another year, after shedding its lower leaves, gaining size and maybe also branching out, it will move closer to the natural look.

One thing I have been observing is the way the roots grow. At the beginning, there were many of them growing around the cut end of the stem. I spread them out neatly when I first repotted the plant. With time some roots outgrew the others and the weak ones were gradually suppressed. Some of them fused into one. Buttresses have begun to form around the overcrowded trunk base. At this point, I'm inclined to prune off smaller roots to make room for bigger vigorous ones, so each buttress can become more prominent. Hmmm... I feel like I sounded a lot like a control freak today. Or isn't gardening all about a controlled way of growing plants? (^_^)