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Cylinder snake plants ready for planting
Moonshine (Sansevieria trifasciata ‘Moonshine’): Short and silvery green, moonshine snake plants produce thin, broad leaves.
Moonshine snake plant
White snake plant (Sansevieria trifasciata ‘Bantel’s Sensation’): also known as “Bantel’s Sensation,” this pale-green plant grows to approximately three feet tall and has pale white and yellow vertical stripes.
Bantel’s Sensation
Twisted sister (sansevieria trifasciata ‘twisted sister’): a dwarf cultivar of snake plant that maxes out at 15 inches and whose yellow-green leaves grow in whorls.
Twisted sister snake plant
Golden Hahnii (Sansevieria trifasciata ‘Golden Hahnii’): These squat succulents produce short leaves with bright yellow borders.
Golden Hahnii snake plant
Rhino grass (Sansevieria pearsonii): A fan-like growth habit and thick, tubular leaves make rhino grass a show stopper. It tops out at twelve inches tall.
Rhino grass snake plant
8. It’s easy to grow snake plants from cuttings
Already own one snake plant? It’s an easy process to multiply it through cuttings. You can take leaf cuttings from a mature plant or divide up plant roots for a more efficient split. The roots produce rhizomes that you can remove with a sharp knife and pot separately to grow into new plants.
Tracey walks us through four different ways of propagating snake plants and how to do it in this article.
Leaf cuttings can rot quickly, so it’s vital to water their pots infrequently and ensure they are in well-drained soil as they get established.
To take a leaf cutting, use a sterile cutting tool to remove a large leaf at its base. Submerge the cut end in a jar of water and place it in a partly sunny location. Change the water out every two weeks until roots start forming, at which point you can plant it. Alternatively, you can leave the cut end exposed for 24 hours so that it forms a callous. Then, pot it cut-end down into fresh potting soil.
Note: Never divide a plant before the leaves are at least four inches tall.
9. The primary health concern is root rot.
Snake plants are stress-free. They rarely develop pest and disease problems, although infestations of mealybugs, aphids, or spider mites are possible. If you see signs of insect damage, a few treatments with an insecticidal soap should be enough to get them under control.
A far more pressing problem will be root rot, which occurs when these arid-loving plants receive too much water. Prevention is your best strategy. Only water snake plants when the soil feels dry a full finger-length down, and repot plants in fresh soil if you see wilting or yellowing leaves.
Remove as much of the old soil as you can from around the roots to reduce the risk of spreading fungal spores into fresh soil.
10. Pruning is sometimes necessary.
Thanks to their slow growth and vertical structure, snake plants rarely get unwieldy. Even so, you may someday find yourself with more plant than desired or unsightly damaged leaves that need removing. Thankfully, pruning is an easy process.
Isolate the tallest leaves and cut them at the soil line with a sterile cutting tool. While pruning is possible at any time, plants experience the least amount of stress in winter.
