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Sansevieria pearsonii (Rhinograss) - An attractive succulent plant that produces a tight clump of vertical leaves from an underground rhizome. The 2- to 3-foot-tall brownish gray green leaves are thick and cylindrical with shallow longitudinal channels running the length of the leaf that terminate in a sharp point - similar in several respects to S. cylindrical but with grayer and thicker leaves held in a tighter growth habit that are more noticeable grooved. If grown in bright enough light it produces a spike of white flowers that often form red-orange fruit.
Plant in a well-drained mix in full to partial sun or very bright light indoors and keep fairly dry, especially in winter months. This plant can go weeks between watering and, as with other Sansevieria, the one thing that usually kills them is overwatering. An interesting plant that is useful for its vertical habit. It makes a nice house plant in very bright light or can also grow well outdoors in part to full sun if in a well drained soil or container - we have had a specimen container plant of this species growing outdoors for many years in a location where it gets winter sun much of the day and bright reflected light in the summer where it flowers annually and has gone through winter temperatures down into the mid-20s° F.
The name for the genus honors Count Pietro Antonio Sanseverino, an Italian patron of horticulture in Naples. The specific epithet is named for Professor Henry Harold W. Pearson (1870-1916), a British botanist naturalized to South Africa and founder and first director of Kirstenbosch National Botanic Gardens. Kew plant taxonomist Nicholas Edward Brown described this species in 1911 in Kew Bulletin of Miscellaneous Information (97) from plants collected by Pearson in Cune Province in southern Angola and Brown in 1915 described Sansevieria desertii in 1915. The name Sansevieria desertii had long been used for the plants in cultivation until it was determined that they were conspecific with the older name, Sansevieria pearsonii, taking precedence.
Sansevieria have long been placed in the Agavaceae, later in the Dracaenaceae and by some in the Ruscaceae family, but most recently has been placed in the subfamily Nolinoideae within the Asparagaceae family. Molecular phylogenetic studies have persuaded some to include Sansevieria in the genus Dracaena, which would make this plant's name Dracaena pearsonii. Because of considerable disagreement over this change, the long standing use of its old name, and so not to cause our own and customer confusion, we continue to list this plant as a Sansevieria.
This information about Sansevieria pearsonii displayed is based on research conducted in our horticultural library and from reliable online resources. We also will relate observations made about it as it grows in our nursery gardens and other gardens we have visited, as well how the crops have performed in containers in our nursery field. We will also incorporate comments that we receive from others and we welcome hearing from anyone with additional information, particularly if they can share any cultural information that would aid others in growing it.
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