The Diurnal and Nocturnal Floral Scent of Dracaena fragrans (L.) Ker Gawl. in Thailand

Abstract

Dracaena fragrans (L.) Ker Gawl., with its green leaves and attractive shape, is a popular ornamental plant in Thailand, used for both interior decorating and outdoor landscaping. Its fragrant flowers only bloom at night. This study investigated the volatile chemicals from the flowers of D. fragrans during the day and night. Volatile compounds were extracted by Head Space Solid Phase Micro-extraction (HS-SPME) technique and determined by Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS). Thirty compounds were identified; sesquiterpenes were the most prevalent (α-farnesene, 23.1-50.8%). The composition of the volatile compounds from the flowers differed between day and night.

The complete plastid genome sequence of Dracaena fragrans (L.) Ker Gawl. (Asparagaceae)

“…In Africa, the species is commonly grown as a hedge to help remove indoor pollutants,such as bisphenol A, formaldehyde, toluene, and xylene (Wolverton 1997;Saiyood et al 2010;Banerjee et al 2017). It is also popular as ornamental plant used for both indoor decoration and outdoor landscaping in Thailand (Dhar 2013;Banerjee et al 2017;Julsrigival et al 2020). As one of the world's economic plants (Wiersema and Le on 2013), it has also been used for many medicinal purposes, including inducing labor by squeezing or chewing its leaves and roots (Kamatenesi-Mugisha and Oryem-Origa 2007), treating malnutrition by using a decoction from its bark (Lacroix et al 2011), and increasing CD4 counts to treat HIV/AIDS by boiling the roots in water (Moshi et al 2012).…”

“…In addition to exhibiting significant antimicrobial activity (Lacroix et al 2011;Banerjee et al 2017), D. fragrans is hypothesized to be an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor (Calder on et al 2010). Recently, linalool, among the other 29 compounds, was identified in this plant (Julsrigival et al 2020), revealing its aromatherapy effects for treating inflammation (Peana et al 2002), inducing relaxation (Linck et al 2009), sedation (Linck et al 2010) and relieving anxiety (Guzm an-Guti errez et al 2015). Here, we performed Illumina genome sequencing on a specimen of D. fragrans to determine its plastid structure and phylogenetic relationship to other species classified to the genus Dracaena.…”