Aloe Species

zone 9 coastal Otago New Zealand

This is an exceptionally beautiful aloe and one of my faves, both for it's consistent per...Read Moreformance and just sheer attractiveness. Never sulks, never does anything alarming (like lose its roots or shrivel into a ball etc), provided you do just a couple of things to oblige it. Mine are generously potted in a half-half combination of large pumice and quality cacti mix.

First, it like a wee bit of shade, filtered light, or in my case polycarbonate cover from our scorching UV. It will reward you with pristine leaves and a nice range of almost opaline leaf colours, blue, lime green, pink, creme etc with no leaf tip necrosis. Out in full sun you, while you may get more dramatic turquoise and reddening, you're always risking serious scorching which can happen when you least expect it, and result in the marring of a nice spec for a long time- not much fun!
Secondly, I would say keep the water up to it, to maintain its plump fleshy appearance. Some report that it doesn't like summer water, but in our milder non desert temps (20-35 celcius), I haven't had problems watering regularly through this time of year and haven't observed leaf spotting or rot. Keep an eye on it and let it dry off if you see squishiness happening in your situation- it will recover.

Buhrri has grown quickly for me, in the top ten percent of the 100 or so species I grow, right up there with speciosa, capitata, pluridens, munchii etc, my ultimate speedster being barberae, so if these plants do well for you, give burhii a go. Well worth a little extra care and can fill in those shaded spots created by taller plants.

My family and I have several Aloes and one of them got REALLY big and flowered (the flower wasn't all that pretty, definatly not ortament...Read Moreal) we also grow pinapples (both of these are inside) and (this one wants to take over the world)a Uphorbia (sorry about the spelling)(also grown inside) also (again about Aloes)you can break off a tip( as long as it is healthy)and use it for burns and other cuts and scrapes and minor injurys

Grow this species in the desert! Just like Aloe striata, it seems to thrive here nicely and flowers every March/April. The small colony...Read More I have features both orange and yellow flowers. It's not a full sun plant in the desert, but is firmly comfortable in the dappled shade of mature Eucalyptus. This species was a little damaged in the 2007 freeze, but survived just fine.

This is another attractive low growing, relatively large fast-growing aloe. It has no spines and a lot of color, in sun or shade. The l...Read Moreeaves are very soft and rubbery. It does sucker, but is slow to do so. Flowers in spring are highly branched and showy red, orange or yellow rosettes on stalks about 1-2' tall. It's from South Africa.

From personal experience this is one of the least tolerant aloes for moving from shade suddenly to full sun, as the soft, rubbery, water-filled leaves seem to 'melt' in the sunshine. My plants survived the move, but barely. Once acclimated, did fine in full sun, but move there slowly if been in mostly shade.

Also discovered this winter (Jan 2007 in So Cal), which was an unusually cold one, that this is one of the most cold hardy aloes, showing no damage at 27F for an extended period, while hundreds of other aloes were badly damaged.