Dracaena trifasciata (Prain) Mabb. 'Laurentii'
Snake plant · Mother-in-law's tongue · African bowstring hemp
- Family
- Asparagaceae
- Native to
- Southern Nigeria to west-central tropical Africa and Tanzania
- Habit
- Rhizomatous perennial
- Also known as
- Sansevieria trifasciata Prain, Sansevieria laurentii De Wild.
Where it comes from
Kew gives the native range as southern Nigeria to west-central tropical Africa and Tanzania — Cameroon, the Central African Republic, both Congos, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Nigeria and Tanzania.1 Worth stating precisely, because “West African” is the usual shorthand and only Nigeria is West Africa proper; Tanzania is on the other side of the continent.
Kew records the fibre use the common name preserves: African bowstring hemp, whose fibres were used for bowstrings, rope, yarn and textiles.2
Naming and description
The checklist is right and most extension servicesextension serviceThe public advisory arm of a land-grant university in the United States. Their factsheets carry a lot of what is actually known about growing things, written by people who tested it — which is why they are cited so often here, and why two of them disagreeing is worth mentioning.Glossary are behind. Kew accepts Dracaena trifasciata (Prain) Mabb., published in Mabberley’s Plant-Book, fourth edition, in 2017; the basionymbasionymThe name a plant was first published under, when it has since been moved to another genus. The original author stays in brackets in the new name, which is what those brackets mean.Glossary is Sansevieria trifasciata Prain (1903).13
Sansevieria is not partly a synonymsynonymA botanical name that is no longer the accepted one for a plant, usually because the same species was described twice. Old books and plant labels are full of them.Glossary of Dracaena — it is gone entirely. Kew’s Sansevieria page says the name is a synonymsynonymA botanical name that is no longer the accepted one for a plant, usually because the same species was described twice. Old books and plant labels are full of them.Glossary of Dracaena, and a search of accepted names returns not a single Sansevieria among them.45 I checked that query myself. The reason is a 2018 phylogenetic study using two plastid markers and a low-copy nuclear gene across some 45 accessions: Dracaena came out as a paraphyletic grade with two clades of Sansevieria embedded in it, so keeping the two generagenusThe rank above species: a group of species close enough to share a name. Monstera and Philodendron are genera; the first word of a botanical name is the genus.Glossary apart would leave Dracaena not a natural group at all.6
The extension servicesextension serviceThe public advisory arm of a land-grant university in the United States. Their factsheets carry a lot of what is actually known about growing things, written by people who tested it — which is why they are cited so often here, and why two of them disagreeing is worth mentioning.Glossary are split roughly down the middle — NC State and Kew use Dracaena, while the ASPCA, UF/IFAS and Wisconsin still say Sansevieria789 — so both names are worth knowing when you go looking for care information.
‘Laurentii’ is older than it looks. It was published as a species in its own right, Sansevieria laurentii De Wild., in 1904, demoted to a variety in 1915, and now sits under D. trifasciata.1011 That predates the US Plant Patentplant patentA US patent on a plant that can be reproduced without seed, lasting twenty years and barring propagation. Searching for one is how this site checks whether a cultivar's origin was ever documented.Glossary Act by twenty-six years.
Fun facts
- The yellow margin will not survive a leaf cutting, and the reason is structural. ‘Laurentii’ is a periclinal chimerachimeraA plant built from cell layers of different genetics, one carrying a mutation and one not. Most stable variegation is a chimera, which is why it cannot be grown from seed.Glossary: a yellow-pigmented outer cell layer wrapped around ordinary green tissue underneath. A 2025 paper states it plainly — true-to-type propagation from leaf cuttings “has proven unsuccessful”, leaf explantsexplantThe piece of a plant a tissue-culture lab starts from — a petiole, a leaf disc, a shoot tip. Which tissue it is taken from decides what grows back, which is why some variegation cannot survive the process.Glossary yield “exclusively green regenerates”, and division remains the only reliable method.12 UF/IFAS’s production guide says the same thing from the other end, marking ‘Laurentii’ and three other variegatedvariegationPatches of leaf with little or no chlorophyll, so they read as white, cream or yellow. The pale tissue cannot feed itself, which is why a variegated plant grows more slowly than a plain one.Glossary cultivarscultivarA plant selected and propagated by people rather than described from the wild. Written in single quotes after the species — Monstera deliciosa 'Thai Constellation' — and never italicised.Glossary as “usually reverts”.9 Mechanism and field observation agree, which is rarer on this site than it should be. So: divide the rhizomerhizomeA thickened stem that creeps along or under the surface, storing food and putting up leaves as it goes. It is a stem, not a root.Glossary, never take a leaf.
- The NASA air-purifying claim is two separate things welded together, and neither survives. The 1989 NASA report everyone cites is a study of volatile organic compounds — benzene, trichloroethylene, formaldehyde — designed to support a plant-plus-activated-carbon filter. It makes no oxygen claim and no CAMCAMCrassulacean acid metabolism: opening the leaf pores at night, storing the carbon dioxide as acid, and running photosynthesis by day with the pores shut. It costs growth and saves water.Glossary claim anywhere. Its snake plant test was one plant in a sealed 0.44 m³ chamber for 24 hours.13 A 2020 review pooled twelve studies and 196 results into a comparable measure and concluded, in its own title, that potted plants do not improve indoor air quality: the median single plant delivers 0.023 m³ per hour of clean air, so you would need ten to a thousand plants per square metre of floor to match the air exchange a building already has.14 Kew’s own page walks the claim back too.2
- The CAMCAMCrassulacean acid metabolism: opening the leaf pores at night, storing the carbon dioxide as acid, and running photosynthesis by day with the pores shut. It costs growth and saves water.Glossary part is true, but it is not universal and not because the leaves are thick. A 2019 study measured nocturnal acid accumulation directly across ten Sansevieria species and found CAMCAMCrassulacean acid metabolism: opening the leaf pores at night, storing the carbon dioxide as acid, and running photosynthesis by day with the pores shut. It costs growth and saves water.Glossary in seven of the ten.15 It also found CAMCAMCrassulacean acid metabolism: opening the leaf pores at night, storing the carbon dioxide as acid, and running photosynthesis by day with the pores shut. It costs growth and saves water.Glossary correlated negatively with leaf thickness — the opposite of the obvious intuition — and that CAMCAMCrassulacean acid metabolism: opening the leaf pores at night, storing the carbon dioxide as acid, and running photosynthesis by day with the pores shut. It costs growth and saves water.Glossary and succulence arose several times independently in the group. I could not establish whether trifasciata itself was among the ten tested; the table is paywalled.
- There is a second subspeciessubspeciesA population within a species, distinct enough to name and consistent enough to recognise, but still able to interbreed with the rest.Glossary nobody sells. Everything in cultivation is subsp. trifasciata; subsp. sikawae exists.16
Care
- Light
- Very tolerant. Commercial production runs at 1,000-6,000 foot-candles (roughly 10,800-64,600 lux), and it survives a great deal less indoors — but survives is the word. Variegation holds better in brighter light.
- Water
- Let it dry thoroughly, then water. This is the plant people kill by kindness: it is built for a dry season and its failure mode is rot from below, which is invisible until the leaves go soft at the base.
- Humidity
- No requirement, and no source publishes a figure for it. NC State says only that it tolerates low humidity.
- Temperature
- 70-90 °F (21-32 °C) is the published optimum for growth. Keep it above about 55 °F (13 °C); it is a tropical African plant and cold wet roots are the worst combination for it.
- Substrate
- Free-draining, and pH somewhere in the 6.0-7.5 range where the two published recommendations overlap. Grit or perlite matters more than the base.
- Fertilizer
- Sparingly, and only in growth. Watch the water supply: this genus is on the published list of fluoride-sensitive plants, where superphosphate and perlite are named as sources — though the entry was written for the old narrower Dracaena, which is worth saying rather than glossing.
- Propagation
- Division of the rhizome. Leaf cuttings root easily but come up plain green — see the species page; for a variegated plant this is the difference between keeping it and losing it.
- Dormancy
- None documented. Growth slows in winter; the watering slows with it.
- Common problems
-
- Soft, foul-smelling rot at the leaf base is Erwinia soft rot, and it follows overwatering
- Southern blight (Sclerotium rolfsii) and Fusarium red leaf spot are the other two named organisms in the production literature
- Root-knot nematodes in reused mix
- A leaf cutting of a variegated plant reverts to plain green. This is not bad luck — it is what the tissue is
- Mushy crown after a cold spell; it does not tolerate cold and wet together
- Every part is toxic to cats and dogs — saponins — and unlike most of this list, that is well established