Oooh Shiny Curly!
Wednesday was another one of those days.
When I got to work in the morning, the boss and I got to talk about how we were running low on houseplants again, so he called his wife to ask her to make a trip to the wholesaler before she came to the nursery.
And then she came in, and started to unpack, and I stopped whatever I was doing to stare and say, ‘ooooh how wonderfully weird!’
Pretty damn expensive, too, but since she let me have it for the price she bought it for (I brought her some of my heirloom tomato plants the next day), I now own this:
It’s tagged as Albuca spiralis ‘Frizzle Sizzle’, and I don’t know much more about it than that. I’m still not even sure I like it, but it certainly is wonderfully weird.
‘Frizzle Sizzle’, hmm…. I’d probably have called it ‘Telephone Cord’ – well, I actually do, too. To think that a good part of today’s children won’t even get that reference any more, with all those mobile/cordless phones – makes me feel ‘old’!
On Saturday, I got off work ‘early’ – after only four hours instead of about six like the last couple of weeks (usually, I don’t even work on Saturdays), so I decided to do some shopping. Enough food to last me for a week in case I have another week of crazy working hours, sunscreen, ant traps, radish seeds, and… I said I needed another Dracaena, right? Right? It was totally on my shopping list!
It’s clearly a Dracaena fragrans, but the variety name… no idea. There was no tag, only a price sticker that says ‘dracaena compacta/lemon’. Which is no help at all. Not even a nursery name (I frequently find out names by checking the grower’s website), and googling only turns up stuff about ‘Lemon Lime’ and ‘Lemon Surprise’. Not to mention that I don’t see anything ‘compacta’ about it at all.
But this is a mystery I won’t solve tonight. A full month of ridiculous working hours is taking its toll, and as nice as it is to sit here on the balcony, candles to my left, cookies to my right, plants all around me and the stars twinkling above, I’ve got to drag myself off to bed now. If I can get up, that is. I’m so sore and stiff I feel about three times as old as I actually am.
Letters & Leaves 
I’ve seen a very similar / possibly identical plant sold as Dracaena ‘Limelight.’
There may be several chartreuse D. deremensis / D. fragrans varieties out there, or different suppliers selling the same plant under different names, but that’s the name I know.
It’s one of my favorite Dracaenas, incidentally. It hasn’t grown much for me in the last couple years, but apparently that was a fertilizer problem: it’s putting on new growth again as of the last two or three months.
Wow! That has got to be the biggest Albuca spiralis I’ve ever seen! Gorgeous!
There’s lots of info about them on CactiGuide.com. Here’s a few random threads:
http://www.cactiguide.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=20328&highlight=albuca+spiralis
http://www.cactiguide.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=18739&highlight=albuca+spiralis
http://www.cactiguide.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11797&highlight=albuca+spiralis
It goes through a period of dormancy, so don’t throw it out if it loses all its leaves.
Thanks – I’ll look into them when I have time. I actually guessed it would go dormant at some point, since the boss’ wife told me she’d found a big bulb while repotting hers (she also took one home).
Thanks – I’ll put it in my plant list as ‘Limelight’, then… whenever I get around to updating it. Haven’t had time to do that in months.
Fertilizer… another thing I really should do, but just no time! Why did I pick a job that is so insanely busy this time of year?
I second the limelight naming of it. I too think it’s a great plant. As for the Albuca, I have a small collection of them. They’re fun plants. Just a warning though they do go summer dormant so after the flowers die down the leaves will start to go down. Make sure to smell the flowers, they have a delightful fragrance.