John the Viking wrote:
Hi, don't know if this plant is part of the bamboo 'family' or
whatever, i'm new and desperate for advice!

Small intro, don't judge me by the nickname, it's just how I look.
I'm a bit of a hippy. I love my plants, almost obsessively. What I
have I received from people I love, or I got them when i felt
delighted. Mostly I've got bamboo's, they're great! I usually go
for the ones you see around the supermarkets, because I see them
bound up looking 'pretty' but know secretly that the way they're
arranged and tied up means they'll die soon. I liberate the bamboo!

anyway, my friend gave me a dracaena massangeana. I saw hers, it was
great. she gave me one before summer last year, it looked good, it
was healthy and beautiful. After a couple of months of good times,
I had to find somewhere for it to stay however, as I was off to uni
for a year, in a hall room with underfloor heating which would no
way do good to the plant and end up being vomited on by people
living in the same halls as me, or messed around with, I planned
for the eventuality anyways. I left it with my 'friend' who had
lots of plants, all very healthy, for a year. I just got it back
from his this weekend and I was pretty upset with him. what I
failed to realise was how this guy had left my plant in the care of
his other housemate, for him to have as a 'project'. This project
apparently was too tedious for said housemate and the plant wasn't
bushy, with lots of layers of vibrant two-tone green leaves, fleshy
and lovely, it was two logs with three extremely long, yellow
tipped leaves, a dead bud and one struggling live bud coming from
the top of one of said 'logs' and very red cores to the logs indeed.

Suffice to say I'm really really annoyed. People keep telling me to
leave the plant for dead, but I refuse, I WON'T LEAVE IT FOR DEAD!
not because it was a gift, or because I have dellusions of it
having a personality, but because it's a living organism that
deserves to see some love when it's had so much neglect. i can only
blame myself for not forseeing what would happen, but I know with
all the attention I can give it I can help it grow back. i don't
care how long it takes.

Please help me! I've trawled the web but all I can find are very
complicated things about nutrients and stuff which I can't fathom,
or just pictures of people using the dracaena massangeana as office
furniture.

I must help to save this plant! I'll have a pic of it up soon if
anyone replies to this thread positively.

thanks,

John

p.s. i'm quite poor, but what money i have i will use on the plant.

You *do* *not* have bamboo.

--

Travis in Shoreline (just North of Seattle) Washington
USDA Zone 8
Sunset Zone 5