Striking, Architectural, and Simple: Our Guide to Sansevieria

Sansevierias—or snake plants, as they’re commonly referred to—are touted as one of the easiest tropical plants to keep alive and happy indoors. Known for their striking, architectural foliage and their ability to withstand a range of lighting conditions and benign neglect, it’s no surprise that these plants are popular with those who are just starting out collecting plants, as well as seasoned indoor gardeners. While flexible in terms of most everything besides overwatering, this guide will detail how best to take care of your Sansevieria.

Native Environment

To understand how to care for any plant indoors, it’s good practice to find out how and where they grow in nature.

Most species of Sansevieria will be found in arid, rocky regions in Africa and Southern Asia. Due to the rough terrain which they hail from, snake plants have adapted and behave very similar to plants in the Americas, like Agave and Yuccas. They have tough leaves, built to withstand harsh weather and hold onto a reserve of water, and they have developed CAM photosynthesis, harkening us back to high school biology, where desert-dwelling plants close their stomata during the daytime to prevent water loss from extreme temperature and heat, and only open them at night. All of this is to say these plants are resilient.

A side-by-side of a Sansevieria canaliculata and a Sansevieria volkensii.

Anatomy 101

If you’ve ever looked at a planter full of Sansevieria and thought someone shoved a handful of stemless leaves into a container, you wouldn’t be entirely wrong!

Sansevierias are sometimes painfully slow growers to what our eyes perceive, but they do a ton of heavy lifting beneath the soil. These plants are masters at self-propagating via rhizomes, which are underground stems that grow horizontally, pushing up new leaves through the top of the soil. These rhizomes find their way through planters, weaving in between existing plant structures, and they will even know when they’ve arrived at the wall of a planter and can’t move any further.

Some species of Sansevierias forego rhizomes and grow off of stolons, with the main difference being that stolons form above the soil line. These species take on architectural appearances over time, often being referred to as “walking Sansevierias,” as the roots these offshoots put out make it look like they’re wearing a pair of stilts and are ready to sprint off away from your planter at any minute.

Beyond rhizomes, stolons, and their roots, Sansevierias—depending on the species—have a couple different types of leaves. Their leaf morphology has to do with what kind of environment the species grows in, and the leaf varieties can be separated into more tropical leaves and more desert-like leaves. Tropical leaves will be very similar to the ever-popular Sansevieria trifasciata, where the leaves come out at a slender point, get broader as the leaf goes up, and then comes back to a point at the top. Plants with these types of leaves can tolerate more indirect to a bit lower light indoors. The desert-type leaves will be much thicker and even more adept at storing water for the plant—these leaves will be similar to the Sansevieria cylindrica, where they look like a thick tube coming out of the soil. Since they grow in harsher conditions, these plants will do well in bright, filtered light to more direct sunlight indoors.

A Sansevieria pinguicula, one of the “walking Sansevieria,” with a pup displaying the stolons it grows off of.

Sunlight Requirements

In their natural environment, Sansevierias grow in dry, rocky terrain, either out in the open or shaded by larger trees. Indoors, this translates to snake plants being able to withstand a large range of sunlight, all the way from indirect sunlight to more direct, full sun for some species.

The ubiquitous Sansevieria trifasciata, in particular, can withstand lower light conditions in the home for long periods of time. Most other species, especially the varieties with stiff, unbendable leaves, will grow better in bright to direct sunlight indoors. Somewhere near unobstructed north or east-facing windows will be an easy choice for most species of Sansevieria, while some of the more succulent ones can be placed near south or west-facing windows, getting direct afternoon sunlight.

When they’re not getting enough sunlight to grow properly, Sansevieria—like other plants—will produce spindly and weak new growth, unable to stand upright on their own, as they reach for more sunlight. Too much sunlight, or sunburn, will cause yellowing and dull-looking leaves on snake plants form their leaves’ chlorophyll being damaged by the intensity of sunlight.

Given enough sunlight, Sansevierias can eventually produce flower stalks.

Watering Needs

Sansevierias are adept at storing water—after all, they need to, given the arid and dry terrain they’re native to. These plants will only want to be watered once their soil is completely dry between waterings. Depending on a multitude of factors with the Sansevieria you have (volume of soil, soil composition, sunlight, airflow, and other factors), this might be somewhere between every couple weeks to a little over once a month. If watered too often, Sansevierias can get limp, mushy leaves and can easily contract root rot.

If they go too long between waterings and are too dry, Sansevierias tend to develop deep grooves on their leaves, indicating their reservoir of moisture is being used up to sustain the plant—snake plants can exist in this state for a long time. While not ideal for the plant, they can be rehydrated by giving more thorough, consistent waterings.

A Sansevieria pfisteri, which is more of a desert-type snake plant with its thick, rigid leaves built for storing copious amounts of water.

Soil Composition

Given how well they store water, the soil composition for growing a Sansevieria indoors should be coarse and airy. Using a base cacti and succulent soil mix and amending that with horticultural charcoal, bark chips, pumice, perlite, or something similar in composition will create air pockets in the soil that allow for water to quickly pass through the planter and will greatly increase your success rate with these plants.

Sansevieria gracilis—a prime example of a Sansevieria with architectural foliage, pointing upwards with subtle curves to its leaves.

Propagating a Planter Full of Snakes

There are two main ways to propagate Sansevierias: via leaf cuttings, or via divisions of rhizomes and stolons.

When propagating snake plants, it’s important to let the cut end of the leaf, rhizome, or stolon dry and callus over for about a full day—this ensures the cut end has time to dry and harden off, preventing water from entering the cutting and potentially causing rot.

When taking leaf cuttings of Sansevierias, cutting diagonally or cutting an upside-down v-shape into the leaf will maximize the amount of surface area of which roots can grow from. Leaf cuttings can be rooted either in water, or they can be planted directly into soil—both methods will take a while to produce roots. New growth on leaf cuttings of variegated Sansevierias will never retain their variegation, and they will instead only produce all-green pups. To retain variegation on these plants, they would need to be cut and divided at their rhizome or their stolon.

Rhizome and stolon cuttings are almost identical in process to leaf cuttings, except that by using this method, your cutting may already have its own root system associated with it and should instead be planted directly in an airy, loose soil mix, where it will continue to root with consistent, thorough waterings.

Sansevierias are a wildly fun family of plants to collect and grow indoors, and we hope that everyone has been able to learn something new about them with this guide. Do you collect Sansevierias or have experience with them? Do you do anything differently? We’d love to hear about it in the comments below!

Words & Photos by: Egan Thorne