Dracaena

Dracaena, a genus of Liliaceae, including one species, D. Draco, an arborescent plant, having, unlike most Monocotyledons, a merismatic zone of fundamental tissue in which new fibro-vasculai bundles originate, so that the stem increases indefinitely in diameter. The stem bifurcates repeatedly, each branch terminating in a head of linear-lanceolate entire green leaves. The flowers are small, greenish-white, and bell-shaped, in a large terminal panicle, and the fruit is fleshy, three-chambered, and one- or two-seeded. The tree does not branch till twenty-five or thirty years old. It is a native of Teneriffe, where, until blown down by a hurricane in 1867, was an enormous specimen, of unknown age, 70 feet high and 48 feet round, with a staircase within its hollow main trunk. This species yields one of the red resins known as dragon's blood (q.v.). The showy greenhouse plant with red leaves, known as' D. ferrea or D. terminalis, is Calodracon Jacquinii, an allied but distinct plant.