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Sansevieria hallii (Baseball Bat) - A slow growing very attractive Sansevieria with a few stout blue-gray thick leaves that are nearly cylindrical, which gives the species the common name of Baseball Bat. The flowers occasionally seen on older plants are long violet-pink tubed with white flaring petals in a tight upright capitate cluster on a very short stem near ground level.
Plant in bright light in a well-drained soil and protect from cold and winter moisture. It is noted as more cold tolerant than many tropical Sansevieria but like most Sansevieria still dislikes cold wet soil. This attractive and interesting Sansevieria is a great sculptural plant for a bright indoor location or under an eave in near frost-free climate.
Sansevieria hallii comes from Mozambique, Zimbabwe and northern Limpopo in South Africa where it grows it the shade of trees and shrubs on rock outcroppings from 500 to 2,000 feet in elevation. The name for the genus was originally Sanseverinia as named by the Italian botanist Vincenzo Petagna in honor of his patron, Pietro Antonio Sanseverino, the Count of Chiaromonte (1724-1771), but the name was altered for unknown reasons by the Swedish naturalist Carl Peter Thunberg, possibly influenced by the name of Raimondo di Sangro (1710–1771), prince of San Severo in Italy. Juan Chahinian, author of The Splendid Sansevieria first described this plant in 1996 in The Sansevieria Journal to honor the British horticulturalist Harry Hall, who lived many years in South Africa. Hall was an avid collector of succulent plants, worked at Kew Gardens and later was the horticulturist at Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden and was the first to find this species in 1957 in East Zimbabwe.
Long placed in the Agavaceae, the Dracaenaceae and by some in the Ruscaceae families, Sansevieria was most recently 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 plants name Dracaena hallii. 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 hallii 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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