Hey, what's up, Garden and Friends? Jeff here, Tropical Plant Party. How's everybody doing? Hope you're doing well. I'm great. I'm sitting out here with my Dresena Draco. I thought this would be a fun plant to talk about. As far as some of my house plants are concerned, this one, it's really high ups there. The Dresena Draco is also known as the Dragon's Blood Tree, just the Dragon Tree. And their native range, which is like Northeast Africa and some outlying islands, these look amazing. They have crazy thick trunks, the most intricate of branching when they flower. It's just a beautiful show and it's supposed to smell wonderful. I've never seen that in person, but oh, how amazing would it be? It looks like something from a science fiction movie. They don't even look real. Growing them as a house plant, it's not going to get to be like that. I mean, that wouldn't fit in my house, right? They get 20 meters tall, so that's not happening. But when grown in a pot, over time, they still can't look really neat. And even at a smaller size like this one, it has some of the characteristics that I'm absolutely crazy about, the main one being the trunk. The leaves are nice, but it's kind of like the Yucca elephant T.D.'s vibes or just a ponytail palm. Neat, but it's about the trunk and the branching. Look at that. It's so succulent and full with all those fun lines on it. Again, it looks like something from a cartoon. It kind of reminds me of the Flintstones. It's very smooth and fun to touch. Okay. That's enough of that. Just a cool looking plant. I look forward to the day when this is taller, so we can see more of that trunk without the leaves hanging over the front. We can talk some about the growth on this, how to take care of it as a house plant, how you take care of it really is going to vary with where you live and what you want to do with the plant. Typically, these are an extremely drought tolerant plant that are at high risk of drowning if you over water them. They don't want their roots to be saturated. I've been giving mine part to full sun during the summertime and the winter I've pushed it into my garage with the rest of my plants where it gets a good amount of light. I don't water it very much during the winter time. Temperatures are cooler. That's when the risk of rot is a lot higher. Outdoors, when it's nice and warm, it's getting all that light. I give it as much water as I feel like. Which is okay because it's in a potty mix that drains very, very, very well. That's key. Needs to drain well. If it's warm and the soil drains well, you can water them much more. It's in the house like 70 degrees. I would be more careful. Let these dry out maybe even 50 percent before watering them. Just to avoid risk of rot. Outdoors and things are hot. You can get away with a lot more. I haven't had this up on drip like I do with a lot of my other plants. It's been getting mostly watered from the rain and then I hand watered about once a week if need be. But I just don't get concerned about over watering it. Like I said, because I know that soil is draining really well. Never sit in water. It'll rot and die. They don't like that. That's the theme of this plant, right? It's really going to be all about the watering. These do tend to grow fairly slow. If you live in an area that has a good amount of precipitation and it's warm your around, you have them outside. You could actually get a reasonable size plant. Where's a post you could grow as a house plant. It might get a few inches of growth out of it. That's about it. If you look someplace that's really dry and arid, probably going to be about the same more than a few inches, but still not much. They grow like snails where it's hot and dry. Hot and wet with well-drained soil. They still get a nice sizable plant fairly quickly. In the summer, I fertilize it with a quarter strength, all purpose fertilizer. In the spring, I just put it a light, top dressing, very light top dressing of some compost on top of the roots. Could use some slower leaves properly, but I haven't messed with it. It would probably appreciate it. The only reason I go quarter strength with the fertilizer is because I'm not trying to get the plant to grow too quickly because sometimes when we do that with your cenas and several other types of plants, you can end up with some skinny, leggy, stretched out growth. I want this to do what it wants to do, what it feels it should be doing, and just provide the nutrients necessary for it to do that. But I'm not necessarily trying to push it to grow even faster. That makes sense. And I'm winter, of course, no fertilizer. Because also I barely water it during the winter time, just against splashed occasionally. I always make sure when the plants inside, there's not much airflow that no water's collecting there in the center of the plant because that can lead to rot. Just other diseases and unsightly foliage. It's just a good thing to avoid. So they do flower, produce seed. It's probably more common to propagate these from cuttings as a house plant. It's going to be a long time until this branch is out to be able to take cuttings. If you've seen them in pots with branches on them, they look really neat. Here's something up there on the screen that's my goal. Just to get there someday. Hopefully in the next like decade, that would be awesome. Everything I've been told from other people who are growing these and have grown them for a very long time as a house plant, as someone who's moving them in and out of the home, that it can take up to 15 years to get those branches on these. And I already talked about those from Circle and Back, so I forgot to mention it. 15 years to get branches on these. Whereas if you live some place where they can grow your round with that heat and precipitation and rich soil, that could be four or five. Slow, steady growth. And actually, this really hasn't even been growing that slowly. When I picked this up last summer, I want to say that the growing apex is right around here and now it's up there, which isn't a lot, but considering it's a slow growing plant, that's pretty good. And I haven't done anything particularly special with it. I've just been getting some water here and there. Of these leaf bases, let's pop right off. I don't poll them I have before when it's just bothered me when they're an awful lot of them, but for the most part, if you just wait and you're very patient, they'll pop right off on their own. But I don't really like to do that, not until they're ready to come off like that one right there is really loose. Don't have to put much pressure or poll very hard. Comes right off. And then I will be repotting this in the spring. It's time. I've had this one for just over about a year, year and a half now. And it's doing well, but I think it could be doing better. I really do want to maximize the growth without having to go overboard with liquid fertilizers. So I'll bump this up a pot size, maybe two in the spring time that way it has all summer. And early fall when it's warm out to reestablish its roots into that container. And I want to have to worry about rot with all the new soil around those roots in the winter time. And I don't think it would appreciate it. Not when it's indoors, temperatures are cooler. Now that wouldn't go very well. And the thing that I will be the most on top of when repotting this is making sure that the potting mix that goes in drains very sharply, meaning that when the water hits the surface it goes right through there. I want it to flush through fast very, very quickly because the more quickly that soil drains, the more I can water the plant and the more I can water the plant, the more the plant's going to grow. That holds onto moisture for too long, takes a long time to dry out, then what you can't water this often. I know you would think it doesn't make a difference, but it does. Similar to with ponytail palms, you can pop those up and barely water those things and they'll live for you. May not thrive, but they'll live for a pretty long time. If you pop them up into a mix that drains really fast, you can water them more often without having to worry about rot. And water more often if you have to worry about rot than you get it. So that mix I use will have a lot of grit to it, a lot of gravel so it can drain really well. I know people who live in really humid climates are just areas that rain them off a lot. They will pop these up sometimes almost and like just a pure grit, a pure gravel you type mix and just not even worry about the swell. A lot of potting mixes aren't technically even soil, it's what we call mixes because it's not really organic materials in it. Teat is an organic material, but it doesn't really smudge and it takes a long time to break down so it's not that different from growing something hydroponically. Has a better holding potential for when you add things to it with the peets and with the coconuts, but still it's not really soil. So that's an option if you live some place with lots of precipitation, lots of humidity and you want to keep the plant outside where it's going to be exposed to all of that in a container, then use a really, really gritty, gravelly mix. Maybe something you can pick up online that's made for cactus, that would probably be a good idea. If you put some place bone dry, you don't really have to worry about that. It's potted up in an all-purpose potting mix probably and it would likely be okay as long as the pot drains well and it's not sitting in water. Another thing I really like about this plant is that it doesn't get, well it does. It gets the brown tips, but it doesn't get the brown tips to the extreme that you get with the ponytail palms, like not at all. There's a little bit on there, but it's not very much and this is old growth. So this is probably from last winter when it was inside. All of the growth that it's put out as it's been outside, where things are more humid, nothing. They're fine. So with those ponytail palms, sometimes those brown tips will go up a few inches, which doesn't really bother me, but I don't bother some people. I think the trunks are equally as neat looking. And ponytail palms, you get that giant flight, which is pretty neat, but with this you get that fun cartoony, like Flintstone-y, sort of trunk, which I think is just amazing. Overall, fun plant, been really easy to take care of. Not always the easiest to come by, I hope that that will change someday because as far as houseplants are concerned, this is a pretty good one. They like bright light, which most people should be able to give in their homes, and you don't have to constantly water them, that makes a big difference, and they don't seem to throw the fuss that a lot of other jacenas will throw when it comes to the humidity levels, as far as like the browning on the foliage. At least that hasn't been my experience. It doesn't really seem to care what I do, as long as it gets light and water. And it's been happy. Let me know in the comments below. Are you growing these? A lot of you I know are down in Florida, and other tropical areas where these can be grown outdoors. How amazing is it? Being able to see these, where you live when they're bigger, with those trunks on them, all those fun, wavy angles. And to say hi, I love talking to everybody. And tip-trix suggestions always appreciated. It's a care slash spotlight video, so we can all learn together, grow together, get down there in the comments, read what people have to say. Alright, as always, and most importantly, everybody. Keep on growing. Well, that's a nice shot. I should have used that in the video. Maybe I will over-late it. Bye-bye.