The genus cordyline is spread around Southeast Asia, Australia, Malaysia and Hawaii, with extensions in tropical America. The term comes from the Greek kordyle, referring to the taproot that resembles a carrot that characterizes these plants. In fact, the roots of certain species of the genus are edible, and some native people of Australasia extracted them for a nutritional beverage. It is situated mainly on the banks of rivers and open forests. In the case of Australian species they require humid subtropical forest conditions. In 1866 the plant flourished in Kew, a Royal Botanical Garden of England conditioned by greenhouses to allow their own plants from warmer latitudes to grow. The following year, in 1867, British botanists saw it flourish in Sicily, where it seems that it was already cultivated. Like the Australian southeast, certain regions of southern Europe present similar climatic conditions to the areas of origin of many good luck plants, which explains the relative success of cultivation in the Mediterranean area.