Snake Plant Flowers

By Guest Blogger - TheJenny

Sansevieria. Snake Plant. Mother In Law's Tongue. When I first read about this common houseplant over a decade ago, the description said "Thrives on neglect." That, my friends, was the plant for me! And apart from not have any rigid watering requirements, it has a lovely sculptural form that works well with modern decor, a nice compact vertical habit which allows it to fit into even the most cramped quarters, and does fairly well in rooms with very little light. Snake plant is my favorite houseplant. I currently have four at home and several at work, many of which I have given as gifts to co-workers that claim they have "the black thumb." I'm convinced that it must be a prehistoric plant in nature because, like cockroaches, you'd be hard pressed to kill one.

But who knew they flowered!? I mean yeah, you see the fancy botanical illustration on Wikipedia with the lovely flower stalk...but I've had a few of my plants for 10+ years, and I had never seen it flower. Then it happened. This summer. This particular plant has an envy-inducing location in the front window and gets really nice filtered morning and afternoon sunlight. It's been in it's current pot for about 7 years, which is another reason I love sansevieria, they like to be cramped. So imagine my astonishment when I see a funny little flower spike coming out of the plant on the side nearest the window. The flower stalk was about 16 inches long and had slender stick-like white flower buds all over it.

The flowers only opened at night and closed back up during the day. They had a delicate fragrance that smelled a bit like lilies and the actual flowers were quite adorable. When open the thin flower petals curved all the way back to the stem. So cool! And the entire blooming process took almost a month, which made it even better. When I asked others if they had ever had a snake plant flower, the response I got from everyone is "really, they flower?" Exactly.

In the end, I'm not sure what I did "right" to get that plant to bloom, so I don't know if it will happen again. And I'm not sure I can precisely duplicate the neglectful pattern of events leading up to the bloom. If it never happens again, at least I took pictures.