Description:

• Shrubs, trees or rhizomatous xerophytic perennials
• Leaves spirally arranged, often in rosettes and crowded at base or top of stem, entire, with parallel venation, stiff, often succulent
• Flowers ± regular, bisexual, hypogynous, in racemes or panicles; pedicels with an equal, often disc-like articulation
• Tepals 3 + 3, petal-like, united into a short to very long tube
• Stamens 3 + 3, arising at base of lobes, exserted; filaments filiform to inflated; anthers versatile, introrse
• Ovary superior, trilocular with a single axile, anatropous ovule in each locule; style slender; stigma capitate
• Fruit a berry
• Seeds 1-3, dirty white

Classification Notes:

• Dracaenaceae is placed under Convallariaceae by A.P.G. (1988) and Judd et al. (1999)

Nomenclature:

• Dracaenaceae
  • Bos: 1 (1992)
  • Obermeyer: 5 (1992)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Genera 1 or 2 (depending on whether Dracaena and Sansevieria are kept separate) with ± 120 species; mainly Old World tropics
• Southern Africa: Genera enera 1 or 2, species 10

References:

• A.P.G. 1998. An ordinal classification for the families of flowering plants. Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden 85
• BOS, J.J. 1992. Dracaena. Flora of southern Africa 5, 3
• JUDD, W.S., CAMPBELL, C.S., KELOGG, E.A. & STEVENS, P.F. 1999. Plant systematics: a phylogenetic approach. Sinauer Associates, Sunderland, Massachusetts
• OBERMEYER, A.A. 1992. Sansevieria. Flora of southern Africa 5, 3

Resources:

• Key to Dracaenaceae genera

• Dracaenaceae genera: