I know as little about this plant as anyone else it seems! But there's not much info to be ha...Read Mored and fewer pics, so here's the specimen I managed to get hold of from a local seller. It may well be that other, closely related Madagascan aloe that shares it's habitat - Altimatsiatrae- but I'll leave that up to the experts.
Around 25cm high and already offsetting from a slightly snaky half-buried stem. Has quite a suede like texture, and is losing it's stressed purple colouration after getting some winter water. Has had a flower stalk for at least a month now, (mid to late winter) and the flowers themselves are graduating from intense, almost glowing orange to a more golden yellow as they open and are producing copious nectar. As you can see the flowers bear a passing affinity to A Capitata, in their slightly puffball arrangement. I wish I had access to a flowering capitata at the mo' since I think that would be a nice hybrid.
Anyhoo, I hope that's a help to people scratching their heads over this plant. It's classification still seems to be up in the air so I wouldn't worry; they're probably too closely related to really make a diff, one being clumping, the other apparently solitary and slightly larger, but in all other respects, pretty much identical.
Coastal Otago, zone 9b NZ.
I know as little about this plant as anyone else it seems! But there's not much info to be ha...Read More