Species · genus Goeppertia · Marantaceae

Rattlesnake Plant

Goeppertia lancifolia (Boom) Borchs. & S.Suárez

Also known as: Calathea lancifolia · Calathea Rattlesnake · Rattlesnake Calathea

Growth habit

perennial

Reference · G. lancifolia

Cultivars of G. lancifolia

The named forms growers keep — each with its own page, each honest about how much we know.

No named cultivars catalogued under G. lancifolia yet. When growers document a stable, named form, it earns its own page here.

Guide

The species-level account. Cultivar pages build on this and say where they differ.

Goeppertia lancifolia is a perennial in the Marantaceae, the prayer-plant family, whose members are tropical forest-floor dwellers wanting warmth, steady moisture, and shelter from direct sun. Give it bright indirect light and a mix that stays lightly moist but never soggy; water when the top inch of mix has dried, roughly every 5 to 10 days. It is sensitive to dry air and hard water, so keep humidity high and the medium evenly damp.

Care recipe

The species record — the baseline every cultivar inherits unless it says otherwise.

Care notes are early — not yet verified

Light: ai:claude-opus-4-8
Water: ai:claude-opus-4-8 (range 5-10d)
Humidity: ai:claude-opus-4-8
Soil: ai:claude-fable-5
Care: ai:claude-fable-5

Light

Bright, indirect

Water

≈ every 10 days

Humidity

High

Temperature

18–27 °C

Soil mix

Airy, moisture-retentive mix of peat/coir with perlite

Propagation

Division of the rootball at repotting

Fertilizing

Diluted balanced feed monthly through the growing season

Growth rate

Moderate

Flowering

Rarely flowers indoors; grown for its foliage

ToxicityAuthoritative · species

Non-toxic to cats & dogs

Prayer-plant family (Marantaceae). ASPCA lists Calathea insignis (= Goeppertia insignis) non-toxic; the genus is uniformly safe. This is where toxicity lives: every cultivar of this species inherits it and none can override it.

Reference images

Every image credited. Licenses link to their deeds.

No reference gallery yet

A few clear photos — habit, a mature leaf, a flower if it blooms — would give this page its eyes.

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Sources: ai:claude-opus-4-8 · ai:claude-opus-4-8 (range 5-10d) · ai:claude-fable-5 · ASPCA

Kept true by its growers

Every fact here carries its source. Grow Rattlesnake Plant yourself? What you’ve observed — how it drinks, how it holds its color, a name that’s off — is exactly what keeps this page honest. Contributions are reviewed before anything changes.