Hi everyone, This is my first post to this great site! I bought a tiny, unlabeled aloe some years ago at a small greenhouse and it has since grown to over 8 feet in diameter if I uncurl the arms. Can anyone identify it for me? Thank you, Kim
I should have added that I know it is a trailing variety. At no time did it ever try to grow upwards. The picture seems to show arms of it growing up but that is only because there is not room for it to droop over the pot - the only place for it to go is up the glass of the window. I have started many fingers of it for my friends and they always grow over the pot and drop down over the sides.
Definitely not Rosemary! The leaves certainly look like a Haworthia or an Aloe, but I don't know of any Haworthia or Aloe species with such a long internode length between the leaves - the ones I'm familiar with all have tight, rosette-like growth.
Here are a couple of pictures of a smaller plant that I started about a year ago from one of the arms that fell off. I am also attaching a picture of my large plant with a tape measure in it so you can get an idea of the leaf size. Thanks for the input thus far everyone!
No, I rarely fertilize my plants - maybe every couple of years or so. It has always been in this bay window which faces east. I have repotted it three times so far and it needs it badly again. I am not looking forward to that task again. It took three of us last time and I lost about 10 arms off of it during the process. I would really like to find a new home for it, maybe a botanical garden somewhere. Kim
Definitely an Aloe, one of the scrambling species. Seems closest to Aloe concinna or may be a hybrid. Soft-grown shade plants are hard to match with their wild forms. Googling on A. concinna I found this pic in Dave's Garden, which could almost be the same plant! http://davesgarden.com/pf/showimage/104933.html (not sure how the link will hold up as it was in their newly added pics, which may only be publicly viewable for a short time)
This is making me worry about this little guy on the far right.... http://www.botanicalgarden.ubc.ca/forums/showthread.php?t=23093
Yes, it certainly looks like the same plant, and Hendrik was wrong in saying it only shows the stem because it was in the shade -- though it's true that that is the case for some "stemless" aloes such as A. vera. At least the other pictures show it will grow happily to a large size indoors. But I agree with Hendrik as to conditions needed for flowering. Except perhaps that scrambling aloes' natural environment is undergrowth, growing through shrubs etc, so they are possibly more shade tolerant than other aloes.
I think I found it I think I found out what this is after all these years! I visited the Frederik Meijer Gardens in Grand Rapids, MI today. In the succulent area , they had plant that is either the same or closely related to mine. They had it labeled as Odontophorus and stated it was native to Cape, Africa. I tried to google it and found many varieties, but could not find a picture anywhere. Thanks everyone for your input. Kim
Odontophorus is a genus of wood-quail. Googling on odontophorus + quail gave about 20,000 results. Odontophorus is a genus of South African succulents in family Aizoaceae. Googling on odontophorus + aizoaceae gave about 1,250 results. Like you, I failed to get a good image. Google image search has no way of telling which caption on a web page belongs to which image. Plants of genus Odontophorus have a very compact growth habit and leaves in opposite pairs. Your plants are NOT Odontophorus , or indeed of any member of family Aizoaceae. I am certain they are a species of Aloe, and one of the scrambling species, though could not be certain they are A. concinna. Plant labels in botanical gardens often get misplaced.
