Corn Plant (Dracaena Fragans) won't stop blooming!

[alaskagold]

Okay, I have researched and researched and I am at my wits end.

I have a corn plant that at one time was absolutely beautiful, until it decided it wanted to start blooming. YAY! It was awesome, spelled so pretty and I was happy it got it too bloom. This was 3 yrs ago.

Now here is the problem, it blooms every 4 months or so. The poor plant looks like a cat who was overbred. And I have tried everything to make it stop blooming. Stopped watering it, over watered it, moved it to a cooler area, moved it to a warmer area. Everytime I move it, it starts to bloom! No matter what I do, it just wants to bloom!

How do I make it stop? Is it root bound, which is making it bloom like crazy? I read these plants like to be root bound... so I am at a loss as to what to do.

Help?

[rainbowgardener]

Very interesting. I have a huge corn plant, that has only bloomed twice in the dozen years or so I have had it (and not two years in succession). But blooming should not harm the plant if it is otherwise healthy. I think they tend to bloom more when they are rootbound, so you could try repotting it. Loosen up the roots, give it fresh soil and a bigger pot.

But did you mean to say it smelled PRETTY? When mine bloomed, I had to cut the flowers off, because I couldn't stand the smell... overpowering, sickly sweet, cloying, artificial smelling. It took me a while to figure out where the smell was coming from, because it didn't occur to me that pretty flower could be making that awful smell. (Also the flowers are only open in the evening, making it a little harder to track down, because the scent would come and go.)

I looked it up a little bit and found a wide range of reactions to the smell, with other people agreeing with me that they cut the flowers off to avoid the smell, and some people that really like it: "their fragrance is extremely strong, but very sweet and beautiful." https://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/go/54287/

I don't know if there are different varieties that have different smells or if it's just different strokes for different folks!

[thanrose]

Rainbowgardener, I also can't tolerate Dracaena fragrans blooms. I was an inveterate plant houri. Any plant anyone tossed out or got rid of, I took and nurtured. D. fragrans grows very well here, and will bloom easily if you put the pots outside in filtered light. I don't think I ever had it bloom year round though. It was always summery hot when it bloomed, although we're summery at least 8 months of the year most years. Since plant rescues often entail repotting, I wouldn't have had any really pot bound plants for long. After ten or so years, I finally learned to pass up any D. fragrans.

Even thinking about the scent is giving the tickling of a migraine aura. I rarely get anything other than the aura anymore and this is probably just my imagination.

Yeah, alaskagold, repot that baby. I'd also suggest high nitrogen and low phosphorus in your fertilizer once it's established in a new pot. Higher nitrogen boosts leaf production often at the cost of flowering, while higher phosphorus is used to promote flowering. You aren't by any chance using African violet fertilizer or something, are you?

[alaskagold]

Thank you Rain and thanrose for the response.

Nope I do not use any fertilizer on it anymore and if I did it was years ago when it first bloom and it was just miracle grow. I wanted it to stop blooming and thought the fertilizer was the problem..... I think I was wrong!

As for the "smells" one time it was more lilac, another time it was more honeysuckle. Sometimes it is just right, other times it gets out of hand and I cut the blooms off.

I will need to bring it home and repot it this weekend. Poor thing looks bad, when it was once beautiful.

[Lisa Warneke]

Hi,

My dracaena has been "thinking" about blooming for 3 weeks now. Just this afternoon I tied up the heavy flower spike to a support, thinking that it would pull the whole plant down if I didn't. Come to find, they are supposed to droop. In any case, sat down at my computer and smelled something sweet! Yep! Flowers are opening. This is the second time since I've owned it, about 18 years. Last time, I felt that I should open my front door to invite in: 1) moths, 2) bats or 3) some unknown pollinator. What habitat/country is native to this plant? What might it be trying to attract? Not that I would really want wild things in my living room...

[thanrose]

All Dracaena spp are native to Africa. I saw plenty of flying insects around the blooms outdoors, and suspect moths visited at night.

[imafan26]

Interesting discussion. Corn plant is another one of those ornamentals that escaped and are now weeds around here. They are pretty and make very good houseplants. It might be pot bound but right now the ti's are blooming too so it may just be the season. They should not be blooming continuously.

Try repotting, give the plant high nitrogen fertilizer, no phosphorus, you just want to make it more inclined to put on growth instead of bloom. Keep it in less light. Dracena does not need a lot of light to bloom but most plants won't bloom when it gets dark enough. You can retrain it to the light once the blooming stops.

They are easy to multiply by cuttings. Cutting it back is the other way I know to stop the blooming. Cuttings usually will not bloom before the root is well established.

Dracenas are in the lily family and when they get old, the roots are like giant hard lily bulbs.

[catgrass]

I'm not sure about the pot-bound being the reason it is blooming. I have one that my son had in college (7-8 years ago). When he went into the service, I got it. 2 years ago, after I re-potted it into a container 2-3 times bigger than the one it was in, it bloomed within a short time. And I agree, the smell is nice from a distance, but in the house it was terribly overpowering. It has bloomed 2-3 times a year ever since, and I have not re-potted it. It occasionally gets some fertilizer when I water it, but not often.

[kjfw]

Thank you so much for these posts! I gather I need to use some plant food high in nitrogen, and to shelter the stalks from the direct sunlight. They get nearly direct sunlight for only about an hour every morning, but it may be too much for them. I also will re-pot these plants early next spring.

I noticed this morning that the taller plant of 2 in my pot (cut from the same stalk and planted together more than 25 years ago) is blooming again, after it already bloomed 3 months ago. This taller stalk is looking very tired, as some of you have said about yours when they have bloomed repeatedly. What worries me most is that no new leaves have come out since the bloom in May. The smaller, shorter stalk looks pretty good and is growing new leaves.

Last summer the taller stalk was attacked by locusts. Several weeks later a bloom came out of the shorter stalk but not from the taller. It well fed the workers for the new wasp nests under the railings on my apartment balcony. The wasps and I co-existed peacefully last summer. I dislike bugs, especially when they sting, but had spoken to an entomologist at a Texas college who had encouraged me not to kill them off.

The stalks bloomed together for the first time 7 years ago. Neither bloomed again until last year. To repeat for attempts at clarity, the shorter stalk bloomed last summer, and the taller bloomed in May 2015. A new bloom now is sprouting from the taller stalk.

If these were African violets, I simply would pluck or cut off the blooms, but the bloom sprout on these dracaenas is strong and impossible to remove even months after a bloom. I don't want to cut the bloom sprout off because I don't want the plant to go through any more trauma or shock right now…

But I am interested to hear what you think.

[imafan26]

When plants bloom when they aren't supposed to, it is usually because of some stressor. That is why I think you should look at the roots. If the roots are in trouble, rotting or dying, the plant will try to save itself through seeds.

It is what happened with my lemon grass. It bloomed and lemon grass rarely bloomed. It turned out that the roots had a fungal problem and they were rotting so the plant was trying to save itself by making seeds.

[tbdavis3]

We recently inherited a whole hedge of dracaena (massanganea?) and were thinking of replacing it with something prettier until we were seduced by the fragrance of the only flowering plant (out of dozens). Does anyone know how often these plants are supposed to flower when they are NOT stressed?
Thanks!

[imafan26]

They flower about 3 times a year and they flower more when they are well established. That is why if you keep disturbing them by repotting every couple of years, cutting them back and moving them around to change their light levels, they tend to bloom a little less. I cut my ti all the time and they bloom less but they still bloom. They get very tall and and while they provide shade for the bromeliads, it encourages mold and mildew on that side of the house (north side). The ti that I hardly bother with and only cut back when they get very thick or are pot bound bloom more. They are a drought resistant plant and for me thy are common outdoor plants. Corn plant can be another one of those weedy plants around here. I don't fertilize them, although they do get water, I don't pay any special attention to them and they like it that way.

[mizbruton]

I Googled 'can a corn plant bloom?'. Imagine my surprise when I read all these posts! I've had my plant for 20+ years, inheriting it like some of you, found abandoned at work from an area where no one sat anymore and the service provider no longer tended to it. I brought it home and nursed it back to health. It now stands 12 feet tall and is still growing. About a year and a half ago I moved it to our bedroom that has a very high ceiling. This past summer I transplanted it to a bigger pot. I can blame it on anything in particular because I just water my plants. I learned about epsom salt this summer but even that gets lost on me as I forget to do it. It has never bloomed before now. I didn't know it was even possible for a corn plant to bloom indoor or outdoor. I walked past it today and for whatever reason looked up and saw this strange thing coming out the very top of it. It was leaning against the small portion of wall that is the center of an a-frame window so it was rather hidden. I spun the pot around carefully since it's top heavy. It is the strangest thing. Since I'm just seeing it, I can't say that I have smelled it. I'm wondering if because it is so tall that the fragrance is lost on us because it is up in the high part of the ceiling. So that's my story. I don't know if it will continue this but we are on an interesting new journey together.

[moon22]

Does anyone have an idea what to do about this plant - I had cut off the flowers at the base, and a year later started smelling the scent. Not as overpowering but still there at night and early am. I wouldnt care but seem to be allergic. I have looked in all the leaves and cannot see any flowers or anything that would obviously smell, and when trying to smell the plant - nothing - it's just in the air.