Random plant event: Sansevieria cylindrica flowering

In late November or early December of 2008, I noticed that we had a flower bud on one of the Sansevieria cylindricas at work. At the time, I figured I'd better take a picture of it, because either it would bloom and be over before I knew it, or a customer would buy the plant -- either way, I'd miss my chance to document the process. I've seen the occasional Sansevieria trifasciata bloom, but never a cylindrica.

And so the documenting and waiting began. (The dates here might not be precisely correct: they're the dates I saved the pictures, not necessarily the dates when I took the pictures. They should be correct enough for our purposes.)

6 December 2008.
These tend to be difficult pictures to get in proper focus: my camera will automatically focus on whatever it thinks I'm trying to take the picture of, but with thin objects that are also moving around, it doesn't really have a clue.

Not that the plants are moving around so much (though sometimes they wave back and forth as the fans blow), but I can't ever hold the camera completely steady.

14 December 2008.
In case you're wondering: I don't buy it myself because I have absolutely no room for such a thing. The plant is actually pretty huge. (We'd had them as multiple plants in six-inch pots, but they failed to sell that way, for at least a year, so I potted several pots' worth together in 12- or 14-inch clay pots. Makes for a bigger, fuller-looking plant, but they're still not selling.) They're also kind of pricey, as one would expect for an extremely slow-growing plant in a very large pot. (Seriously: they're slower than Zamioculcas zamiifolia.) But really it's mostly the size, not the price.

31 January 2009.
Six weeks later, individual flower buds were clearly defined.

14 February 2009.
By this point I was starting to wonder what color they would be: I'd never heard of a Sansevieria flower that wasn't white, but the way the tips of the flower buds were turning purple made me wonder.

20 February 2009.
But, it turned out to be white after all. Unlike S. trifasciata, I couldn't detect any odor at all from these flowers. The proportions are different, too: longer stamens and pistils, more tightly curved petals. Check the picture out in its own window to see the detail a little better.

Differently proportioned or not, it's still pretty clearly a Sansevieria flower. I'm disappointed with the lack of scent, but whatever. Cool enough.