Interesting flowers on my "corn palm"

[Sue]

Hi all,
I live in the northeastern us and have a large (7 ft and pressing against the ceiling) corn palm (don't know the actual name of the palm but the leaves resemble that of a corn stalk). Every 5or so years this plant blooms with strange looking white clustered flowers that open at night, the scent is amazing, the entire house smells like it's been perfumed the blooms close during the day and are scentless. The flowers are fairly long lived so this goes on for a couple of weeks. None of my friends have ever heard of this rather common palm plant behaving like this, would love some feedback....thanks

[IthinkIknow]

I would love to see pictures of this palm, is there anyway you can take a picture and post it on this forum. I might be able to guess the Genus at least or figure out what type of palm it is. I wonder if its a hybrid pf a plant and a palm... A stalk like palm would be a bamboo palm and know that I think about it it might throw off pods that are white flowers that have seeds... but without a pic it would be hard to guess since there are more than 2000 types of palm trees.

[CarolM]

I think you have a palm-like plant. Try a search for Dracaena fragrans and see if the pictures look like your plant. The flowers sound like this plant rather than a "true" palm. Dracaena fragrans is often called corn plant. It is not closely related to corn or palms.