The Biggest Dragon Trees (Dracaena draco), in San Diego, California
by Randy Baldwin, San Marcos Growers

On February 14, 2014, Matt Ritter, Cal Poly Professor and tree book author, threw down the gauntlet when he measured the large old Dracaena draco in Alameda Park (downtown Santa Barbara) and declared it the National US Champion Dragon Tree. There were so many others in Santa Barbara known to be larger that this started a quest to find and measure all of the large Dracaena draco in private estates and gardens in Santa Barbara area. The progress we have made on this is documented on our Biggest Dragon Trees of Santa Barbara Page. In the process of determining which of our own Santa Barbara trees were the largest we also began searching for other trees in places such as Santa Monica, Malibu, Corona del Mar and San Diego. It was in San Diego that we found many other dragon trees that were also very big, though we have not found trees down there that are nearly as big as those in Santa Barbara!.

The largest specimen Dracaena draco in the San Diego area was reputedly the specimen in front of the Hotel Del Coronado but soon we received pictures of other large dragon trees, many also from Coronado Island and then the autumn 1958 issue of California Garden was discovered with a Dragon Tree on the cover and an article by Chauncey I. Jerabek title "The Dragon Tree" that listed all of the larger Dracaena draco in the San Diego area. Thanks largely to Google Map images, many of these dragon trees have been found to still exist including the ones that graced the cover of the California Garden magazine that was in the garden of Captain Clayton Miller USN at 1265 Alameda Blvd.