Dracaena sanderiana, commonly known as the lucky bamboo—though not a true bamboo—stands tall in water-filled vases and small ceramic pots around the world. Native to the Central African rainforests, it has learned to grow in shade, where sunlight filters through dense canopies and moisture lingers in the air. Its lance-shaped leaves, green and unfolding from cane-like stems, carry the memory of that environment—structures evolved to store water and endure scarcity.
At its most fundamental level, my relationship with Dracaena sanderiana is metabolic. As Dr. Alberto Villoldo states:
“We are perfect symbionts: oxygen, the waste product of plant respiration, sustains life for humans, and our respiratory waste, carbon dioxide, sustains life for plants.”
(Grow a New Body, p.25)
Yet, this collaboration extends beyond breath. I spend time with the plant, drawing it slowly, tracing its stems and leaves with my eyes and hand moving together. In those quiet moments, I am not simply depicting it; I am listening through touch, translating its gestures into line, sensing the way its body rises, bends, and stretches toward light.
Propagation deepens this entanglement. In the wild, Dracaena sanderiana may flower rarely, but in homes and nurseries, it spreads easily through cuttings. A stalk trimmed and placed in water grows roots and begins again. Humans have become its reproductive agents, carrying it across continents and cultures.
plant arrangement + drawing by flavia bertorello
In Chinese Feng Shui, Dracaena sanderiana is revered as a bearer of harmony, health, and prosperity. Its upright stems suggest resilience; its ability to grow in water speaks of abundance and flow. Yet beneath those symbolic layers lies the material intelligence of its biology—the same adaptations that let it thrive in shaded forests now allow it to live beside us, in glass jars and city apartments.
To live with Dracaena sanderiana is also to practice care. It cannot flourish indoors without attention: its water must be refilled, and every week I pour just enough to meet the line of greenish moss that marks its memory of level. Its stems lean toward the side window a few feet away from where it rests, its leaves avoiding the direct sun. In return, it softens the room with its quiet presence.
Haraway urges us to “stay with the trouble”—to resist fantasies of separateness and commit to the entanglements that sustain life. In the silent exchange of gases, in the ritual of trimming and watering, in the slow tracing of contour lines, Dracaena sanderiana teaches this entanglement. It is both oxygen and omen, adaptation and allegory, practice and presence.
I often find myself pondering the condition in which it lives—half in water and half in air, its follicles like hairs, unfurling and reaching. What is their function?
Root hairs—the fine filaments, translucent and soft—are extensions of epidermal cells, functioning like capillaries. They absorb not only water and nutrients but also host invisible companions: microbial communities that help the plant draw minerals and build resilience. The life of Dracaena sanderiana, balanced “half in water and half in air,” is not accidental—it is a precise ecological negotiation between suffocation and sustenance. Each filament performs a quiet choreography of exchange, breathing through water, touching air, mediating between worlds. I watch them lengthen in the glass, mapping their slow dialogue with the environment, a rhythm that feels close to my own.
observational drawing by flavia bertorello. pencil on newsprint paper, dim: 12”x18”
