DRACAENA, in botany, a genus of the family Liliaceae, containing about 4o species in the warmer parts of the Old World. They are trees or shrubs with long, generally narrow leaves, panicles of small whitish flowers and berried fruit. The most remarkable species is Dracaena Draco, the dragon-tree of the Canary Isles, which reaches a great size and age. The famous specimen in Teneriffe, which was blown down by a hurricane in 1868, when measured by Alexander von Humboldt, was 7o ft. high, with a circumference of 45 ft. several feet above the ground, and was supposed to be 6,000 years old. A resin exuding from the trunk is known as dragon's blood (q.v.).
Many of the cultivated so-called Dracaenas belong to the closely-allied genus Cordyline. They are grown for the beauty of form, colour and variegation of their foliage and are extremely useful as decorative stove plants or summer greenhouse plants, or for room and table decoration. A large number of the garden species of Dracaena are varieties of Cordyline terminalis. D. Goldieana is a variegated species from west tropical Africa.