Not a silly question - it'll sprout from the side of the cane. Don't be too concerned if you don't see anything right away. It took close to two months for mine to start regrowing after I did the sane thing.

Great, thanks. And thanks for not thinking it's a silly question!

Hey fellow Portlander! Nice pruning job.....did you re-root the cut off portions? Also remember to cut back on the watering until you have new leaves growing.

Hi John! I love seeing fellow locals on here. :0)

I actually put the cut off portions in hydroton pellets, and they seem to be doing okay. Time will tell, I suppose.

I had a couple others that I put in dirt, but they didn't make it.

Thanks for the tip re: cutting back on watering. I wouldn't have known to do that.

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hello! your picture is kinda fuzzy, but YES! those seem to be new buds starting. you can expect some new growth anywhere you made a cut.

about rooting cut pieces of cane: i found that dipping them into water, then a rooting horomone before sticking into dirt, making certain that you keep the cane running in the same direction it was while part of orginal plant, worked best. "up" must remain up & down must remain down or plant won't be able to obtain water.

then mound up dirt around the cane to help it support itself while starting roots. keep slightly moist not soggy until new growth is obvious, then water as normal for the conditions plant lives in.

rooting horomorne seems costly when buying it, but you'll probably onlt need the one container for years to come so splurge & get a name brand product. it'll be worth the $$.

lil-again.

Thanks lil-again!

Two questions:

1. What brand rooting hormone do you like? If I went to a store I wouldn't know the name brands from the generic junk.

2. You said I can expect some new growth anywhere I made a cut? I'm afraid I have no idea what you're talking about. Was I supposed to make some cuts somewhere at some point?

1) most any should work, i suppose. i just happened to find mine at a hardware store one afternoon. it's not a name brand, but i've used it w/ great results. it's powdered & i figure there's enough to last me 3 lifetimes in the little bottle.

2) i must have misunderstood somewhere, thought you'd cut the cane into more than one section. if it gets to tall or spindly looking, you can cut the cane into pieces. put rooting horomone on the bottom ends, plant them in dirt & soon have new growth sprouting in all kinds of placs.

you can do this w/ any tree like plant as far as my understanding goes. except for ficus. i won't say anything about those cos they are touchy & i've no experience w/ them so i won't give advise about them.

goos luck w/ your baby, lil.

thanks lil-again! No, I didn't resection - I just lopped off the tops so I could fit the plant in my car and bring it home from the office!

Hello all,
I would like to know if it would be ok to cut my marginata back,and would it be ok to do it now? I lost one of the stalks a couple of weeks ago,the leaves were turning brown and falling off.and it was really looking bad,so I got rid of it,( It was also kind of mushie)It was the only one like that,the rest seemed fine and i checked the roots and they seemed to be ok. now the other two stalks are losing leaves.I keep it moist and don't think i over water,I've also moved it to a brighter location. I only have light coming in from west windows.so it sits just to the side of the window,is that ok ?
Thanks in advance.
linda

Dracaena marginata needs to get pretty dry between waterings, actually: if you're keeping it moist but not soaked, it's still probably too wet. The light is probably acceptable (nothing wrong with a west window), and brighter light is, everything else being equal, probably a good move.

D. marginata has the annoying habit of not telling you that anything's wrong until one of the canes rots out suddenly, by which point it's too late. This happens to me plenty often in the greenhouse where I work, too. It's almost always a watering problem. I've had to retrain my instincts: now, when I think one needs water, I wait another week and then water it. Even that is occasionally too often, with the plants in the bigger pots.

Thanks Mr. S, always a pleasure to read your input.I'll let it dry out between waterings from now on.Is it ok to cut it back now? and how would it react?There are two canes left,and they are about 2ft.11ins.long from the soil to the top of the longest leaf.I have a small one in another pot that has only one cane,but it has two canes coming off of it. would two canes do that if I cut the long ones back?Hope I have been clear,as you can tell I don't know anything about them.

What makes me hesitate a bit here is that it's late enough in the year that I would expect the plant to recover and resprout a lot slower at this time of the year than it would in, say, May. No obvious harm in that, but it's going to use water even more slowly and need water even less frequently than it does now, once the canes are cut, so you'd be taking a bigger risk of rotting out one or both canes than you would be by waiting.

So I'd say if you can stand to look at the long bare canes for the next five or six months, you should go ahead and do so. If you think they look bad, and every time you see them, you think about how bad they look, then you should go ahead and do it now, because that's better than training yourself to hate the plant.

The cut stems will normally sprout one to three new growing tips, after an agonizingly slow wait. As in the above thread, the tops can be re-rooted if you so desire, and you can shorten the stems on the canes before rooting them. I've had very limited success trying to get cane sections of D. marginata to root, and by "very limited" I mean zero, but the theory behind it is pretty straightforward: cut the cane into three-inch sections, plant the sections either vertically or horizontally in soil, and wait for rooting. My cane cuttings of Dracaena have so far all either rotted or been given up on before anything got going. Next time the opportunity arises, I think I'm going to try rooting them in water -- I don't know if it will work better, but it can't work worse.

Mr S. it is like you say, better success in the spring then in the fall, in my area anyway. Daylight is getting longer and brighter in the spring and must signal to the plants to get growing, fall is a more noticeable slowdown. I've only done diefenbachia (sp?) and yucca stumps, in the spring, laying on their sides, half buried in soil, making sure a couple of 'nubs' are facing somewhat up, and had rooting and growth, and that would still take up to 6 weeks.