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Re: [SANS] cultivar names

Hi,

After our discussion last week about the silver trifasciatas I found my copy
of Juan Chahinian's book, "The Sansevieria Trifasciata Varieties", which
John mentioned in his post.  On page 105 he has a list of "equivalent names"
for some of these varieties, similar to John's list below except that Juan
endeavors to designate one name as the correct one for each cultivar.   I
think Hermine is correct that during the many years when Sansevierias were
collected by just a few people spread wide apart and with little
communication the names got pretty  much confused.  With species I think
this was compounded by botanical garden and other public collections where
care was erratic; often the people taking care of the plants had little
knowledge or interest in the correct names.  Since these plants are nearly
impossible to kill they hung around for decades in such collections, names
faded, labels lost or in the case of the above ground stolonating species
like suffruticosa moving about from one pot to the next rooting and
supplanting the original inhabitants but not their original labels.  When I
was madly collecting any Sansevieria with a new name I acquired S.
suffruticosa five times under such names as powelii, phillipsae, fruticosa,
and another I can't recall.  It took about ten years for me to realize they
were all the same suffruticosa.

Anyway, back to Juan's book: he mentions all of the names we discussed
although I don't know how he determined which name was the original for each
clone.  I still like the name 'silver moon' better than 'moonshine' and hate
to change it!  He also puts 'siver star' and 'silver princess' as synonyms
of 'gray lady', which in the text portion he describes as not getting above
12" tall.  But my 'silver princess' , a smaller plant in a 6" pot has a few
18" leaves while my old plant of 'silver star" has most of its growths
uniformly about 36" tall.  On closer inspection I noticed that the new
leaves of 'silver star' are silver but with many dark green flecks on them.
I would now say that while 'silver princess' may actually be 'gray lady';
but, that 'silver star' is something else--it may even be correctly, 'silver
star!

Juan's book is an excellent reference for these varieties.  His descriptions
have good photographs of each variety.  He also describes quite a few other
trifaciata forms though I am no longer the "mad collector" and am quite
happy with just  the ones I already have.  Well, maybe a few more of the
more distinctive cultivars!...........

Jon Dixon
Woodside, California

-----Original Message-----
From: John Gamesby(The Yeti)
Date: Sunday, March 15, 1998 4:36 AM



Hermine I agree with you totally there are son many plants going
round the trade with different names especially over here in the uk
as we seem to have different names to what you have over in the
States this makes ordering anything extremely difficult. The main
culprits are the ones with silver. platinum or moon in the name.

Silver Cloud = Silver Queen = Silver Sheen

Silver Moon = Moonshine = Moonglow = Platinum Princess

Silver Princess = Gray Lady = Silver Parva = Silver Queen Miniature =
= Silver Star = Silver Sword

Silver Spear = Silver Queen = Silver Cloud

Silver Platinum = Argentea

Silver Frost = Silver Starlight

As you can see quite a muddle especially the Silver Princess to
Silver Sword muddle or mix up.

<snip>
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