Hi there, I am one of those professional plant people, and I deal with dracaenas a lot. I had a long chat with the wholesale greenhouse lady where I buy my plants about dracaena marginatas recently. She told me that when they are grown in Florida, they grow them under very high light with lots of fertilizer, so that they grow fast. Time is money, the faster they get the plant to full size, the sooner they can sell it and use the space to grow another one. With all of this light and water, their leaves are very firm, to the point that they can give you an extremely painful poke in the eye, like being poked with a stick (don't ask me how I know this...) A plant will keep these stiff leaves for several months after being put into its office location. If the light is very bright, the leaves will stay stiff. If the light is dim, they will gradually start to droop over time. Once they droop, I don't think they can get stiff again, at least not those particular leaves. The droopy plants that you see the plant company caring for probably only need water every two to four weeks, especially if it is dark and/or cold. I do not recommend moving marginatas into cold. They do not like cold at all, and it will lead to the lower leaves turning a mushy yellow, along with all sort of possibilities for root and stem rot. Marginatas do like to be kept dry, especially if they are in a dim location. Not as dry as a cactus, but pretty darn dry. When in doubt, err on the side of not watering. The ones you see the plant company take care of with the stiff leaves? It is quite possible that they remove them and replace them with new ones periodically, and that is why the leaves appear to stay stiff. Hope that helped!

Thanks for your replies, wirosarian, Jackie, Patty, and SoFL rose. I'm surprised to hear that our temps could be cold enough to cause this. We have days in the 60's and nights in the 40's lately. But, I guess it does make sense, because if it was much colder, it wouldn't bloom at all. I never would have considered cold temperatures causing it. Some sort of bug was consistently ruining the buds on Irish Creme during the summer. I just assumed it was the same thing. I think you guys maybe correct. I'm looking more closely now, and I don't really see chewing from a pest. I'm glad I asked, because I never once thought it could be anything but pest damage. Thank you all so much! Lisa

it turned up now.. because its that time of year .. imo... its probably extremely humid nights and mornings... that are conducive to mold..mildew.. and fungus growth... drought does not help.. but then its usually less humid if you go into extended deep drought.. but when the drought breaks.. they will come... you are hitting all the variables but not recognizing them... good work.. it will all come.. ken ps: as fall rolls in.. the dewey nights.. will show you all the spider webs all over the yard.. another free show of ma nature.. please dont go out there.. and broom them all out of the plants.. spiders are our friend.. outdoors anyway.. lol... thing is.. by fall .... they have all matured.. so the webs are large... so easy to notice... fall is also a good time for the late fall shroom season.... personally.. id ont eat any of those .. too many can be problematic... but thats a different show...

Stush, I still have a number of plants you sent me years ago. Getting old sucks but I do as much as I can with the disabilities. I'm in my usual winter mental slump because of depression, which I've had most of my life. When the light starts getting low in the fall I can feel it coming on. I get a lift of mood in spring but the depression is always there, my intense interest in plants has kept me going for decades. I recall you seemed really down on plants in general some years ago, and I thought you were getting out of it entirely. I see you're still here and apparently still have some sans and other succulents. I don't know much about some of the genera you have, but I do love aloes, haworthias and the like. The latter would be especially good to collect since most are small and one could have a nice collection just utilizing windowsills. I've never thought about quitting plants altogether but definitely considered picking one or two families of plants and giving away or dumping the rest. I have a gigantic collection of philodendrons, monsteras and other aroids,the vining types are clambering across the ground, are in the trees and everywhere else. Besides sansevierias I have smaller collections of succulents, begonias, odds and ends in many other families, plus small and mature size trees of crotons, Literally thousands. Unfortunately I find all plants interesting and beautiful. But, getting down to hundreds of plants rather than thousands would be a relief. Sans would be at the top of the list since they're tough and require less maintenance. Unfortunately, the leaf disease that has plagued the trifasciata types since 2010 has been disappointing, I haven't found a treatment that works very well, I guess it's a fungus, have you found a product that works? The best I've found is spraying with full strength mouthwash, but not 100% effective. Neither are fungicides. I only have a couple of pitiful looking Hahnii's, and no Futura types because of the disease, all have been wiped out, I used to grow them so well prior to 2010 when it was discovered in that wholesale greenhouse in Florida and thousands of sans had to be destroyed. Still, it got out and now is world-wide. It's like the Covid of sansevierias. The full-size trifasciata types seem to be a bit stronger against it, but leaves are still made ugly by the watery lesions. I tried posting some pictures yesterday, both from my phone and my desktop and I can't figure it out. Houzz is so clunky and user-unfriendly, oh for the old GardenWeb days. Pics from my phone seemed to be foggy looking, very low quality. Sending from my desktop could be the fault of my very old computer. I downloaded pics from my phone and I see them in Pictures on desktop, but when I go to Houzz and attempt to download there, the pics don't seem to be in my Pic Folder even tho I know they're there. Wish I was more savvy with computer stuff, a 15 year old that grew up with this stuff could probably figure it out in the proverbial New York minute. I'll keep working on it. I'll post some if I can figure out the problem. Russ