About Cordyline rubra Otto & A.Dietr.
Cordyline rubra, commonly called the palm lily, is an evergreen plant native to Australia. It grows as a shrub reaching around 4 metres (13 ft) in height, and occurs naturally in warm rainforest and moist eucalyptus forest. Its natural distribution ranges from Lismore to near Bundaberg, Queensland. It was first formally described in 1848 by German botanists Christoph Friedrich Otto and Albert Gottfried Dietrich, and the Latin species epithet rubra translates to "red". Cordyline rubra is most easily identified by its leaf stems, which measure 5 to 20 cm (2–8 in) long and are flat or somewhat concave in shape. Its leaves are narrow elliptic, 15 to 50 cm (6–20 in) long, and 3 to 5.5 cm (1.4–2.2 in) wide. Flowering begins in summer, and the flowers are lilac in colour. The fruit is a bright red berry 10 mm (0.4 in) in diameter, produced on panicles 10 to 40 cm (4–16 in) long. This species propagates easily from both seeds and stem cuttings. Cordyline rubra is less commonly cultivated than C. australis, but it is also well suited to gardens with moist soil and semi shade. It is a resilient plant that can tolerate neglect, and it is also suitable for growing as an indoor potted plant. It occasionally hybridizes with Cordyline petiolaris in the wild.
