Monocotyledon

Asparagaceae

Dracaena

General Information
	Distribution	Mostly in tropical Africa south of the Sahara and with a secondary center of diversity in Southeast Asia, with fewer species in Macaronesia, South Arabia, Socotra, Madagascar, the Mascarenes, Northern Australia, Hawaii, Central America and Cuba. A few species are widely cultivated as ornamental foliage plants.
	Habit	Trees, shrubs (sometimes scandent), unbranched suffrutices or rhizomatous geophytes, from <10 cm to >40 m high, entirely glabrous. Roots usually bright orange, sometimes tuberous. Stems above ground with or without secondary wood thickening in arborescent species, below ground often forming rhizomes; bark smooth, green or yellowish in arborescent taxa turning grey when old, usually with long-persisting, conspicuous leaf scars; some species producing conspicuous red resin in wounds and on scar tissue.
	Leaves	Leaves alternate, distichous or forming a rosette, sometimes congested into pseudowhorls or tufts; triangular sheathing prophylls green, white or straw-colored, often present at the base of young, vigorous or cane-like shoots; lamina 10 cm to >1 m long, simple, entire, linear, flat to canaliculate, cylindrical, or semi-cylindrical in transverse section, usually smooth and with smooth edges, leathery, glossy, pale to dark green (usually distinctly paler beneath), sometimes variegated with longitudinal or transverse, white, cream, yellow or grey stripes, bands, or separate to merging spots; base ±sheathing or in some species gradually or abruptly narrowing into a winged or grooved, white, yellowish or brown to orange pseudo-petiole; nerves absent or present, and then strictly parallel, usually ca. 1 mm apart, often concentrated along the midline adaxially and then forming a ± distinct midrib, usually with a prominent, pale costa beneath that fades distally near the tip; secondary veins usually not distinct in fresh leaves, often ± sinuous and irregularly transverse.
	Flowers	Inflorescences terminal (sometimes appearing axillary when terminating or representing short-shoots), continuous to the supporting stem or more or less abruptly deflexed, erect or distinctly pendulous, similar in diameter to the supporting stem or abruptly constricted and slender, simple-racemose or branched-paniculate, elongate or congested to capitate, >10 cm long. Flowers single, paired, or in two- to many-flowered glomerules, often fugacious, diurnal to nocturnal, fragrant. Bracts and bracteoles present or absent, when present white, green, brown or purple-tinged, ranging from very small and diaphanous or ± obsolescent to large and tightly enveloping the base of the flowers. Pedicels short to long, often distinctly jointed or obconical or disc-like at the base of the flower below the ovary. Perianth from <1 cm to >10 cm long, red, yellow, white or greenish, often with purple or pink tinges, midribs or tips, some turning yellow when wilting or dark brown to black on drying; tepals 6 in two whorls, united at the base into a short to long tube, erect or slightly to strongly recurved at anthesis; lobes flattened-costate, rarely also with 1 or 2 pairs of parallel nerves, often with a rounded, minutely pustulose, cucullate apex. Stamens inserted at the throat or slightly higher, opposite the perianth lobes, the vascular bundles joined with the costa of the lobe in the perianth tube; filaments filiform to flattened or inflated, usually over the entire length or in the upper part only then subulate at the apex, straight with an incurved apex or sigmoid; anthers basal-versatile, their thecae extending downwards well below the connective, latrorsely dehiscent. Ovary ovoid, cylindrical to bottle-shaped, smooth, 3-locular with a central placenta; ovule one per loculus, hemitropic with a downwards-directed micropyle; style terminal, terete, slender, as long as or longer than the perianth at anthesis (sometimes developing a single spiral twist towards the top when remaining confined in tardily-opening buds); stigma capitate, usually distinctly 3-lobed, pustulose on the upper surface.
	Fruit	Fruits 1–3-seeded, fleshy, depressed-globose to ellipsoid, sometimes distinctly lobed or horned, to 2 cm in diameter, the indurated receptacle usually persistent; exocarp smooth and leathery, usually bright green when young turning bright yellow to red when ripe; fruit pulp somewhat paler, embedding the comparatively large seeds.
	Seeds	Seeds globose, discoid or irregular, usually distinctly flattened against adjacent seeds when these present, white or brownish; endosperm opaque, bony; embryo perpendicular to the testa.
	Contributor	Nancy Khan