December 2013 - Genus of the Month - Sansevieria

[Bill]

http://www.bcss.org.uk/pom.php

[Phil_SK]

Awww, what a lonely place.

I can't claim to be much of a Sansevieria grower (my shortcomings can be seen in http://www.bcss.org.uk/foruma/viewtopic ... 2&p=218856 ) but I thought I'd give a bit of an update and clearer pictures.

First is the standard S. trifasciata laurentii, which started off my interest. I bought a 2" or 3" pot of tiny plants, perhaps tissue cultured, a few years ago. I now have six, which are starting to produce more typical upright leaves. For such a common plant they really are beautiful.

Not long after I saw this, which I can't decide whether it's the same or different. So far it's wider and shorter than I would expect for a S.t.l. but time will tell if that's how it will look at maturity.

The badly hail-damaged plant broke up into 4 pieces when I removed the rotten bits. Here are two of the less tatty ones. The drying out of the leaf bases is evident on this plant too, that I mentioned in the other thread. As it recovers it's producing stacked growth of immature leaves, with mature leaves starting to come through again. Not sure what this plant's name is.

It's looking a bit green at the moment, not to mention dusty, but in the summer light this was an amazing dark green. Al thought it might be gilt-edged 'Futura'

I wasn't very excited about this one when I got it but it's growing on me. The new growth is much paler than these mature leaves. Again, having spent summer outside there was quite a bit of rotten stem and, consequently, I now have 4 small plants.

The plant Al identified as possibly being Bantel's Sensation really had been in the wars but I wasn't to blame this time. I unpotted it soon after buying it and, with the rotten bits removed, I ended up with lots of mostly single-rosetted plants. These are still recovering and don't look very good but a couple give an idea of what might be.

[Phil_SK]

My only new purchase since that other thread is my first non-garden centre plant. It came from the Northwest Mesemb Show in Manchester labelled S. metallica, which I read is a name often wrongly applied to kirkii forms - as in this case, it would seem.