ON A SUCCESSFUL EXPERIMENT WITH THE DRAGON-TREE. 
45 
ON A SUCCESSFUL EXPERIMENT WITH THE DRAGON-TREE 
(DRACAENA DRACO). 
By Mr. John Bain , College Botanic Garden , Dublin. 
I beg to lay before you a brief account of an experiment which I made on a large Dragon- 
tree, at the College Botanic Garden, Dublin, and which I commenced about three 
years ago. 
Gigantic specimen of Dracaena Draco, at Orotava, in the island of Tenerife. 
The Dragon-tree ( Draccena Draco ) is a native of the East Indies, whence it was 
introduced to Europe in the year 1640. Dr. Lindley, in his admirable work, “The 
Vegetable Kingdom,” says, “Dracaenas, the most gigantic of the order, attain their largest 
size in the Canaries ; a D. Draco is there described as being between seventy and seventy- 
five feet high, forty-six and a half feet in circumference at the base, and was known to be 
very ancient in the year 1406.” 
In the early part of 1842 our plant in the College Botanic Garden was quite against 
the roof of the house, when I proposed the experiment, which was then generally con- 
sidered impracticable. Consequently the room was enlarged from twelve to twenty feet in 
height. In 1846 the tree again fully occupied the limits assigned to it ; so much so, that 
