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Dracaena draco
Also called Dragon Tree, Dragontree, Canary Islands Dragon Tree
A slow-growing, long-lived evergreen tree from the Canary Islands and nearby Macaronesia, with an umbrella-shaped crown that forms after about 10 to 15 years. Grow it in full sun in free-draining soil and water sparingly once established.
Dracaena draco, the Canary Islands dragon tree or drago, is a subtropical tree in the genus Dracaena, native to the Macaronesia archipelago (the Canary Islands, Cape Verde, and Madeira; possibly introduced in the Azores) and northwestern mainland Africa.
It was first described by Carl Linnaeus in 1762 as Asparagus draco. In 1767 he assigned it to the new genus, Dracaena.
Dracaena draco is cultivated and widely available as an ornamental tree for parks, gardens, and drought tolerant water conserving sustainable landscape projects. It has gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit.
In 2017, the city of Angra do Heroísmo (Terceira Island) planted a grove of 200 dragon trees.
Dracaena draco is native to Macaronesia and southwest Morocco, where it is commonly cultivated as an ornamental plant. On the Canary and Madeira archipelagos, wild endemic populations today are known only in Tenerife and Madeira after recently going extinct in the wild in Gran Canaria. Wild populations in Morocco extend to the southwest Atlas Mountains. Its origin on the Azores is uncertain but it is thought to result from an introduction made by the Portuguese prior to 1500 with seeds from Madeira and Cape Verde, as some individuals were observed to have similarities with the Cape Verdean subspecies (subsp. caboverdeana); there are around 200-300 individuals on remote sites in the island of São Jorge and a few more on other islands and it is unknown if these populations can be considered native or the result of an early introduction.
When the bark or leaves are cut they secrete a reddish resin, one of several sources of substances known as dragon's blood. Red resins from this tree contain many mono- and dimeric flavans that contribute to the red color of the resins. Dragon's blood has a number of traditional medical uses, although dragon's blood obtained from Dracaena draco was not known until the 15th century, and analyses suggest that most dragon's blood used in art was obtained from species of the genus Calamus formerly placed in Daemonorops. The primary and secondary plant body are the site of the secretory plant tissues that form dragon's blood. These tissues include ground parenchyma cells and cortex cells. Dragon's blood from Dracaena draco and Dracaena cinnabari can be distinguished by differences in 10 compounds and a dominant flavonoid DrC11 missing in Dracaena draco.
Suji · Tree Dracaena · Lance Dracaena · Dracaena bacularis · Lucky Bamboo · Socotra dragontree · Dracaena concinna · Fragrant dracaena · Zebra Striped Dragon Tree · Iguanatail · Dracaena pethera · Song Of India
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Dracaena draco by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
Pet safety from the ASPCA toxic and non-toxic plant lists.
