Plant in a well-drained mix in full to partial sun, very bright to moderately dim 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 attractive with its dark green rounded and channeled leaves that arch over gracefully and with leaf tips that are not sharp or dangerous. - we have had a specimen container plant of this species growing indoors in our general manager's office for many years where it only gets indirect light and is irrigated irregularly but not oftener than once every month or two. We winter have not tried to grow this species outdoors and suspect it best if kept as a house or patio plant when temperatures are above freezing.

Sansevieria patens was described by the English plant taxonomist Nicholas Edward (N.E.) Brown in 1915 after the plant had flowered at the Royal Botanica Gardens Kew in April 1910. The species was listed as origin unknown but was thought originate from Kenya. 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. The spellings "Sanseveria" and "Sanseviera" are also commonly seen. The specific epithet is from the Latin word meaning "spreading" in reference to the outwardly arching leaves of the species. Len Newton in his treatment in Illustrated Handbook of Succulent Plants: Monocotyledons Vol. 2 (Springer, 2020) includes it as a species but notes that Stephen Jankalski listed it as probably a hybrid in his treatment "Browns's Sansevieria Monograph - an update" in Sansevieria 15 (2007) and Peter A. Mansfeld in Die Systematik der Gattung Sansevieria (Asparagaceae) (2015) follows this treatmen. Newton however notes that "the plant breeds true from seed after self-pollination".

We first received a plant of Sansevieria patens in 1995 from the collection of noted Stockton, California Sansevieria collector Alice Waidhofer, who collected this plant in 1981 in the dry Koko Crater, an annex of the Foster Botanic Garden in Honolulu, Hawaii where it was listed with their accession number FBG 66.649. The plants at this location had been acquired by Foster Botanic Gardens Director Paul Wessich in 1965 when he received 13 different Sansevieria varieties from F. Douglass Wilson, the geneticist at the U.S. Crops Research Division, Cotton and Cordage Fibers Branch in Belle Glade Florida. The following year Wessich received 29 more varieties from the U.S. Plant Introduction Station in Miami, Florida and it was in this latter group of plants that he received the plant labeled Sansevieria patens, and this matches with the U.S. Department of Agriculture record of introducing it in December 1958 with accession number #254414. Confusingly however, when Alice Waidhofer examined the Foster Botanic Gardens accession records, she found that it listed their Sansevieria patens as coming from Lucknow Botanic Garden in India.

Ed Eby, a San Jose Cactus and Succulent Nurseryman who moved to Walanae, Hawaii, documented the Koko Crater Sansevieria collection in his article titled "The Sansevieria Planting at Koko Crater Botanic Garden Honolulu, Hawaii" in the March-April 1984 issue of the Journal of the Cactus and Succulent Society of America (CSSA V.56N2) he noted that though plants were we labeled at one time, over the years the labels were overwhelmed by the vigorously growing plants or were lost to time (much like the story about Aloe eminens 'Koko Crater'), so it has been debated whether there were multiple accessions of this species at Koko Crater or whether Sansevieria patens was even a valid name. In the May-June 1991 issue of the CSSA journal there is a report from the Sansevieria Robin (a group specializing in particular genus) from Sansevieria book author Juan Chahinian who suggests that given differences in the plants at Koko Crater from what was originally described by N.E. Brown in 1915, that perhaps it would be best to list the specific epithet in quotes as if it was a hybrid or cultivar of another species. The following year the Sansevieria Robin published an article written by Marilyn Rossovich in the September-October 1992 Journal (CSSA Vol.64 No.5) titled Sansevieria patens that notes that most of the plants grown in the western US under this name came from Alice Waidhofer or Ed Eby and it describes the plant we grow with two pictures of it credited to Alice Waidhofer.

When we received Alice Waidhofer's entire collection in 2004 we also acquired an irregularly variegated selection and a very slow growing dwarf selection of Sansevieria patens. We believe it is this dwarf one that the Huntington Botanic Garden distributed in 2004 through their International Succulent Introduction (ISI) program as ISI 2004-35. Sansevieria patens = Sansevieria 'Ed Eby', which is a cultivar name credited to Stephen Jankalski, but his plant is a very different plant from what we grow and sell as Sansevieria patens.

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. 

The information about Sansevieria patens displayed on this web page is based on our research conducted in the nursery's horticultural library and from reliable online resources. We also include 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 we receive from others and welcome hearing from anyone with additional information, particularly if they can share cultural information that would aid others in growing this plant.