Sansevieria francisii (?) identification confirmation

[MatDz]

Hi Everyone!

I have recently purchased a stunning (to me at least, especially given the price of not even a tenner!) NOID Sansevieria sp., which I strongly suspect to be S. francisii, but would appreciate a confirmation or correction here.

There is quite some variation between leaf colouration by offshoot, but the general growth pattern seems to match with Colin's plant he shared in this thread and e.g. the photograph here.

Also, into what I am supposed to pot this beast?! It's about 36 cm between the roots of each of the side offshoots!

A few photographs:

S. francisii 1

S. francisii 2

S. francisii 3

S. francisii 4

S. francisii 5

S. francisii 6

[Colin Walker]

Hi Mat,
Yep, the ID you propose is correct.
And yes this is a tricky one to accommodate in a pot. I’ve several specimens sprawling all over the place. It spreads even more as it flowers easily and then sends out even more stolons. Enjoy.

[rodsmith]

I acquired a specimen last year that was mainly stalks with a few leaves at the ends. As I don't have a lot of space I discarded most of the plant and rooted the growing rosette, which is doing nicely. I await flowers in due course with interest.

[MatDz]

Hi Mat,
Yep, the ID you propose is correct.
And yes this is a tricky one to accommodate in a pot. I’ve several specimens sprawling all over the place. It spreads even more as it flowers easily and then sends out even more stolons. Enjoy.

Thank you Colin, I was counting on you!

I am considering to pot it diagonally in a rectangular bonsai pot (which I still have to buy) but would about 75 mm depth be enough for the root system? I have removed the nursery pot now and the plant has a good 10 cm of roots, I guess I can just spread them across a bit more. I will also need to get some support for the offshoots, but that's a worry for later.

I acquired a specimen last year that was mainly stalks with a few leaves at the ends. As I don't have a lot of space I discarded most of the plant and rooted the growing rosette, which is doing nicely. I await flowers in due course with interest.

I will try to avoid this at all cost! The single offshoot on the right is barely attached to the main rosette - I am amazed it actually survived the journey and being displayed in a shop, but the root(?) is pretty long already and should touch the surface if potted right. Ones on the left are in a less favourable position, but they seem to be very sturdy, so should be all right on its own.

PS: The development of the S. bella 'Mutomo' from this thread is amazing, 2-3 years from a small rosette. Cannot wait for the stolon's stolons on my francisii (and others)!

[Colin Walker]

Hi Mat,
Yep, the ID you propose is correct.
And yes this is a tricky one to accommodate in a pot. I’ve several specimens sprawling all over the place. It spreads even more as it flowers easily and then sends out even more stolons. Enjoy.

Thank you Colin, I was counting on you!

I am considering to pot it diagonally in a rectangular bonsai pot (which I still have to buy) but would about 75 mm depth be enough for the root system? I have removed the nursery pot now and the plant has a good 10 cm of roots, I guess I can just spread them across a bit more. I will also need to get some support for the offshoots, but that's a worry for later.

I acquired a specimen last year that was mainly stalks with a few leaves at the ends. As I don't have a lot of space I discarded most of the plant and rooted the growing rosette, which is doing nicely. I await flowers in due course with interest.

I will try to avoid this at all cost! The single offshoot on the right is barely attached to the main rosette - I am amazed it actually survived the journey and being displayed in a shop, but the root(?) is pretty long already and should touch the surface if potted right. Ones on the left are in a less favourable position, but they seem to be very sturdy, so should be all right on its own.

PS: The development of the S. bella 'Mutomo' from this thread is amazing, 2-3 years from a small rosette. Cannot wait for the stolon's stolons on my francisii (and others)!

Hi Mat,
Sorry, I've only just got around to replying to this.

A wide bonsai pot for your S. francisii would be just perfect. Indeed you've given me an idea to follow your example. I kind of did this with one specimen, but the pot wasn't a true bonsai but a round shallow black job. Another of my charity shop purchases which I drilled holes into, my standard practice. However, the plant thought differently. So it was on a wide window ledge and sure enough it sent out a stolen that grew over the edge of the pot and hung down over the edge. This species is the most trifid-like of all my sansevierias apart from S. gracilis.

So both these species need a lot of space to spread out and grow as they would naturally do in habitat. I tend to let them hang rather than provide a wide shallow pot. So be warned, both of these could take over your whole growing space given the chance. To move my massively large specimen of S. gracilis up here I merely chopped it up and rooted a handful of pups. The rest I regret to say went in the bin. Shocking confession I know, but I only have so much space and I want to grow other stuff apart from these two sansevierias. So I recommend a pair of secateurs go onto your Santa shopping list for future use to keep your sansevierias within bounds.

Also as I'm sure I've already mentioned, S. bella is another thug of a plant and that too had to be down sized to move it here, and already it's threatening to take over the planet again.

[Colin Walker]

First off is the plant of S. francisii I mentioned earlier.

For scale this is in an 18 cm diameter bowl, previously I think a pasta bowl, but now has drainage holes so if returned to its former use the pasta sauce and pasta would likely part company and the table would be a bit of a mess.

So, this main plant on the left flowered and produced 4 stolons. The oldest grew quite long, escaped the pot, grew down over the side of the windowsill and subsequently the weight of the offset caused the stolon to break away. Public health warning - some of these stolons aren't strongly attached to the mother plants and will indeed break away if left unsupported.

One of the stolons developed into an offset (right), which also flowered and has now produced its own stolon. So this plant is inbuilt to conquer the world.

[Colin Walker]

Here is S. gracilis growing in, wait for this, a teapot.

A I said earlier this has the same tendency as S. francisii of escaping from its pot to head south for the equator and better weather. Two of the offsets are themselves flowering and will in turn produce further offsets.
From this I calculate that the R number for growth is about 4 and rising.

S. gracilis is my most floriferous sansevieria, but as I said earlier, it does need to be kept in check with judicious pruning. It could make a great hanging basket/pot plant, but I've never tried this display mode.

On the growth rate front this plant has 6 new stolons, so no guessing how I might rate its R number.

Apologies for the view here. In winter the conservatory is crammed full of plants since I move precious material down from the greenhouses so they can be given loads of TLC, warmth and water over the winter.

And yet again the c**p software here can't handle my Apple produced pic, but you get the gist, I hope.

[Colin Walker]

Finally for now is S. phillipsiae. This cutting has been in the collection for just 6 months. It came unrooted. It's since rooted and produced the stolon which is currently 20 cm long and growing fast.

This is a very choice sp. that I've never grown before. Its natural distribution is SE Ethiopia and Somalia. The type locality is in Somalia. My collection is from Ethiopia for which I have very precise GPS data, so as soon as it gets big enough I'll propagate and distribute it to other sansevieria enthusiasts. So far it's proved to be an easy and reasonably fast grower.

For scale the pot is a 9 cm diam. plastic job - shocking confession I know, but needs must. On repotting it'll get an attractive replacement. Repotting won't actually be long away since I've just noticed that roots are emerging from the drainage holes.

[MatDz]

Splendid plants Colin, as always! Thank you for sharing! I have a feeling leaving any kitchen utensil within your reach will quickly make it unsuitable for its intended use

The S. gracilis you shared seems light enough for a hanging pot, but I wouldn't try it with any of the larger Sansevierias because of the health and safety risk, the leaves are quite spikey!

I was quite lucky with my last visit to a garden centre and bought a 40 cm rectangular Italian terracotta pot with two stacked 50% discounts! So now (rather temporarily, as I am still hoping to find a suitable bonsai pot!) my S. francisii sits in it.

PS: The development of the S. bella 'Mutomo' from this thread is amazing, 2-3 years from a small rosette. Cannot wait for the stolon's stolons on my francisii (and others)!

I only now realised I did not in the end provide a link to the S. bella 'Mutomo' thread I mentioned earlier, here it is: http://www.agaveville.org/viewtopic.php?f=44&t=3798

[Colin Walker]

Splendid plants Colin, as always! Thank you for sharing! I have a feeling leaving any kitchen utensil within your reach will quickly make it unsuitable for its intended use

The S. gracilis you shared seems light enough for a hanging pot, but I wouldn't try it with any of the larger Sansevierias because of the health and safety risk, the leaves are quite spikey!

I was quite lucky with my last visit to a garden centre and bought a 40 cm rectangular Italian terracotta pot with two stacked 50% discounts! So now (rather temporarily, as I am still hoping to find a suitable bonsai pot!) my S. francisii sits in it.

PS: The development of the S. bella 'Mutomo' from this thread is amazing, 2-3 years from a small rosette. Cannot wait for the stolon's stolons on my francisii (and others)!

I only now realised I did not in the end provide a link to the S. bella 'Mutomo' thread I mentioned earlier, here it is: http://www.agaveville.org/viewtopic.php?f=44&t=3798

Hi Mat,

Well I'm dead jealous of your 40 cm rectangular Italian terracotta pot, so yes please if you can spare one.

Picture please perhaps?

Seriously, I've got my sights on garden centres after Christmas for bargains, because there will surely be multiple bargains to be had. Dobbies are already advertising sales but because of everything I'm not shopping F2F again till after Xmas for obvious reasons. My wider family has just had a new addition - a totally gorgeous baby girl whom I've just seen for the first time on WhatsApp.

My even closer garden centre which will remain confidential 'cos I don't want others to get there first to snaffle the said bargains, has yet to reduce anything, but post Xmas they surely will.

They have some very attractive oval bonsai pans which I think are moulded from some sort of cement. Sounds naff I know, but the sides are crafted to look like miniature stone walls. Because of the material they're made from the larger ones are really heavy. So I have to have at least one of these, even if it's just the smallest one, but I'd love the largest one too which must be at least 50 cm long.