Lucky Bamboo
Dracaena sanderiana
also called dracaena sanderiana
Not a bamboo at all but a dracaena, usually grown in a vase — which makes what you fill the vase with the whole of the care regime.
- Type
- Houseplant · Perennial
- Botanical family
- Mixed / other
- Foliage color
- Green
- Sunlight
- Part shade
- Feeding
- All-purpose balanced
- Frost tolerant
- No
- Mar–Dec Spring Growth
- Jan–Mar Spring Growth
- Plant spacing
- 11.8 in
- In-row spacing
- 11.8 in
- Between rows
- 15 in
- Square-foot density
- Not suited to SFG
- Root system
- Fibrous, and content in a pot
- Working depth
- 6–14 in
- Can reach
- 24 in down where the soil allows
- Spread
- 6–12 in across, about 0.5–1× the width of the plant
- Shallowest pot
- 8 in of soil
It spends its life in a pot, so the pot is the whole root run. Move it up one size when roots show at the drainage holes, and remember that it can never go looking for water it has not been given.
Not a bamboo at all but a dracaena, which is why it lives happily in a jar of water with no soil. Change the water every fortnight and keep it off tap water if yours is chlorinated.
The habit is Lucky Bamboo’s own; the figures are what that habit usually comes to at this size, not a measurement of this species. Roots follow the soil either way: a compacted pan, a high water table or heavy clay stops them well short of any of it, and deep open ground lets them go further.
- Cats and dogs
- Recorded toxic
Recorded as toxic to cats and dogs by ASPCA.
The ASPCA row names the genus only, which covers our Dracaena sanderiana. Its named Dracaena rows are other species.
- Mealybugs Mealybug and spider mites once the air runs dry
- Root & crown rot Mushy stems where bacterial rot sets into water left to go stale
- Algae greening the water in a clear vase — an opaque one keeps it dark
- Yellow leaves after direct sun, chlorinated water, or too much feed
- Brown leaf tips from the fluoride and chlorine in tap water
Beneficial predators that hunt this plant's pests — grow their favourite flowers nearby to recruit them. companion plant
- Green lacewing Chrysoperla carneaHunts Mealybugs
Its bristly larvae — "aphid lions" — impale aphids, mealybugs, thrips, and mite colonies, eating hundreds a week. Adults feed on nectar and pollen from small open flowers and overwinter in hollow stems left standing.
- Hoverfly SyrphidaeHunts Mealybugs
Bee-mimicking flies whose legless larvae graze aphid colonies clean while the adults pollinate. A ribbon of shallow, nectar-rich flowers kept in bloom all season recruits wave after wave of them.
- Ladybird (lady beetle) CoccinellidaeHunts Mealybugs
The gardener’s favorite ally: adults and their alligator-shaped larvae each eat thousands of aphids, plus scale, mealybugs, and other soft-bodied sap-suckers. Grow flat, open flowers for the adults and never spray a colony that ladybird larvae are already working.
Green-leaved houseplants, like this one.
The Cottage Garden Companion — the gardener's herbarium at cottagegardencompanion.com