Garden Journal: My Sansevieria Collection
Cathie
August 17, 2020
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I love gardening. Ever since I was young, I enjoy gardening. It's probably because I grew up in a home surrounded with different variety of crotons and santans. My dad is fond of planting though I rarely see him spend a lot of time in the garden. He was always busy at work to make meets end for a family of five. He was a hardworking man, who grew up in a farm. Which is probably the reason why in some ways, he made sure we had some blooms and greens in our house. His mom, or Nanay as we would call her, owns a beautiful garden. Different varieties of orchids, shrubs, even fruit trees were grown. Tatay, my paternal grandfather, was the one I always see tending the garden. My aunts, even away from Bacolod, also have their own lovely gardens. I can say, gardening runs in our blood.
Personally, I am not really into collecting specific plant species. I'm more of a "oh you're pretty! I want you" or "Nice leaf, I think I want you" kind of urban gardener. Which is why, I didn't expect I'd be owning a growing family of sansevierias.
It started when this pandemic hit us. We were on community quarantine and on a work from home set-up. Since most of the time I am at home now, I have finally decided to finally tick off one of my bucketlist: to rearrange our garden. Think about turning this wasted time from pandemic into plantdemic.
Related: Cathie's Bucketlist
This is my initial set.
(back to front: Siam Silver, Parva, Bird's Nest, and Moonshine)
As mentioned, I wasn't really into Sansevierias. We've been growing Parva at home, but that was it. However, this one time I was looking for a garden medium supplier, the lady was also selling plants. You know that usual voice you hear when you're buying stuff online, "Save more on the delivery fee, by buying more"? Long story short, I bought 3 Sansevieria varieties for the price of Php 100.00 only. Note that this purchase happened before the "Plant Fever" and people are still busy with barter (yea, if you're not from Philippines, we hyped barter groups. Yes, that old school barter trade), so don't expect you'd still be able to get plants a little less than Php 50.
And from 4, it accidentally grew to 8 and now I've collected up to 15 varieties of Sansevierias. Why accidentally you say? You see most of my plants we're given to me. My good friends and relatives are generous enough to share with me a piece of their garden. Most of the time, I get surprised when they would send me a message that my plant is ready for pick up or that they have already dropped it off to my mom's office. I'm lucky I found such genuine people. From those generosity, my four turned to eight, to fifteen! Yup! Fell down the Sansevieria rabbit hole pretty fast. 🙈
Now let me share with you my growing Sanse Family!
📌 Sansevieria Trifasciata Hahnii Marginated
Common Name / Trade Name: Dwarf Laurentii
Flashback to my many young years ago, I thought this was just the baby version of laurentii. Little did I know it was another cultivar. It's common here in the Philippines. My dad was into crotons, and we didnt have any sansevierias back then, so I would usually see this in neighbor's house when I was young. Like most Hahnii, it only grows less than 30 centimeters.
📌 Sansevieria Trifasciata Hahnii Jade Dwarf Marginata
Common Name / Trade Name: Black Star
Looks the same like the Dwarf Laurentii except Black Star have solid green leaves marginated with creamy yellow.
📌 Sansevieria Trifasciata Hahnii
Common Name / Trade Name: Bird's Nest Sansevieria
Bird's Nest Sansevieria is a short growing form of Sansevieria Trifasciata. This is quite common here in the Philippines along with Black Star and Dwarf Marginated. This stemless plant remains less than 30 centimeters high and spreads into a cluster of leafy funnels. It's green leaves are marked with clear horizontal bands. Although it is a rare sight, this sanseveria blooms greenish white flowers.
📌 Sansevieria Trifasciata Hahnii Streaker
Common Name / Trade Name: Streaker
I initially thought I finally got a Hahnii Swirl! Only to be equally excited to know that what I got is a "Streaker". Streaker is another interesting mutation of Hahnii. It has a streak of silver-gray down the center of each leaf with dark green patterned margins.
📌 Sansevieria Aubrytiana
Common Name / Trade Name: Father-in-law's tongue
How old were you when you learned there's a Father-in-law's tongue?
This one has pale green, marbled foliage with reddish margin. This one can actually grow like tall blades, but slightly smaller than Sansevieria Trifasciata or Mother-in-law's tongue. I've read that this variety is a native of Angola, and Tanzania.
📌 Sansevieria Guineensis Variegata
Common Name / Trade Name: Golden Hemp || Yellowstone
This beauty has wavy, grayish-green waxy leaves richly marginated in creamy yellow. The striping are vertical and they distinctively curve as they mature. This variety grows about 20 inches tall. This is quite uncommon, and I luckily got this on Facebook marketplace for a very budget-friendly price.
📌 Sansevieria Trifasciata Moonshine
Common Name / Trade Name: Moonshine
This is the first hybrid I fell in love with. It's unique silver-green leaves margined with darker shade of green are so attractive. Moonshine grows about 12-20 inches tall and it's leaves are about 3-5 inches wide.
Fun Fact: In low light conditions, the color will turn into darker green but will still retain the silvery touch.
📌 Sansevieria Trifasciata Silver Hahnii Marginata
Common Name / Trade Name: Night owl || Silver Star || Starlight
Sansevieria Night Owl has rich, shiny dark green spear-shaped foliage that is surrounded by creamy whitish-yellow variegation. This uncommon hybrid is small and compact. It's actually prettier than moonshine, in my opinion.
📌 Sansevieria Kirkii Pulchra Coppertone
Common Name / Trade Name: Coppertone || Star Sansevieria
Coppertone is a rare cultivar of the Sansevieria variety of Kirkii Pulchra. This exotic beauty is commonly know as 'Star Sansevieria' and is abundant in Tanzania and East African countries. The stiff and elongated leaves have wavy edges and copper to bronze tones. They usually get around 3 feet long. Like most sansevierias, Coppertone also blooms scented flowers. I was surprised to read about that too! Would be interesting to see mine bloom.
📌 Sansevieria Parva
Common Name / Trade Name: Kenya Hyacinth
This Sansevieria is quite common here in the Philippines. This is the first snake plant that we owned. It has a light-green narrow leaves with darker patterns. The leaves can grow up to about 12-15 inches and about 2 inches wide.
Like most of our Sanse, we started with only one planted on a big pot, and it grew and gave pups abundantly. Prior to the pandemic, we had 3 pot-full of parvas thriving and enjoying the neglect. LOL. Then when the pot became way overcrowded, my dad decided to plant it outside our house around the mango tree. With it's leaves a bit pointy, it helped ward off people climbing our tree and taking its fruit without permission. Hahaha! Unfortunately, the pandemic came, and along with it is the "plantdemic". Slowly, people passing by our house are no longer interested in the fruit our mango tree can offer, and prefers to take our parva instead. Now we only have 2 pots-full left of this neglect-loving plant.
📌 Sansevieria Masonia
Common Name / Trade Name: Mason's Congo || Whale Fin
This Republic of Congo native earned it's nickname "Whale Fin" because of the unique shape of it's unusually wide, paddle-like leaves. Though slow-growing, the Whale Fin reaches an impressive size compared to the other member of the sansevieria family. It grows up to 3 feet long and up to 1-2 feet wide. It's paddle-like leaves are beautifully mottled with patterns of dark and light green, and unnoticeably leaf margins are often pink-ish red. With its unusual look, it makes a great conversation piece.
📌 Sansevieria Trifasciata Metallica
Common Name / Trade Name: Siam Silver || Manolin || Sayuri
This is one of my first four. At first, I thought this was Bantel's Sensation. Got the right ID when I joined a PH-based Facebook group about Sansevierias. Siam Silver or Manolin can grow up to 2-3 feet tall and it's still, leathery leaves are about 2 to 3 inches wide. They have a vertical striping pattern of grayish green bands of varying width.
📌 Sansevieria Trifasciata Laurentii
Common Name / Trade Name: Laurentii
Another common variety that I have is the Laurentii. Months before the plant hype, I saw this variety just outside a small sari-sari store near our house. I even planned how I am going to befriend the store owner or what to buy from her store, so I can ask for some. I've always wanted to have one to be added to my collection. I've passed by her store couple of times, practiced what to say, thinking what to buy, but I could find the courage to do what I wanted so I kinda give up without attempting. Lucky for me, few days after I decided to give up, my cousin Leny sent me some. Hahahah!
Laurentii means "three bundles" and this can be seen in the leaf markings of the variety. Each leaf is margined on both sides with solid lines of broad, creamy-yellow edges. In the center, there are two different shades of horizontal, zigzag green stripes. This strap-shaped, fleshy perennial can grow up to 3-4 feet long with leaf width of about 1-2 inches wide.
📌 Sansevieria Jaboa
Common Name / Trade Name: Jaboa
This striking upright variety of sansevieria shares a lot of similarities with Whale Fin. It has wdie leaves and can be a very good floor plant since it can grow tall as it matures. I tried looking for its mature size measurement online, but to no avail. This giant was given to me by my good friend Nikka. 😄
📌 Sansevieria Trifasciata
Common Name / Trade Name: Mother-in-Law's Tongue
The tallest among my Sansevieria and the most common here in the Philippines. Funny thing about me having is, eventhough this is the most common sansevieria, I just recently acquired together with the Mason's Congo.
And that's it! My 15 (and maybe expanding) Sansevierias. Would be interesting to add more rare cultivars of this plant. I'm eyeing Variegated Whale Fin, Boncel, and Silver Nymph. I think they're captivating!
Before I end this post, a very quick update. Recently, experts reclassify Sansevieria under the Dracaena genus. It means that if we call a snake plant Sansevieria Trifasciata before, now, it will be known as Dracaena Trifasciata. For me, I'm still not comfortable addressing it as Dracaena, as a different plant comes into my mind. Hahahha
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