by Richard Pearman

Created on: April 07, 2009

Aloe vera is a very common houseplant in colder climates and often grown as a garden perennial in warmer ones. It has also escaped from cultivation and become a wild plant in many places (it's natural habitat is unknown, probably somewhere in Arabia, as its been cultivated since time immemorium). Not only is it attractive and easy to grow but it also has medicinal properties and a very short and easily remembered Latin name.

"Aloe" is the genus a group that normally includes several types of similar organisms and it should have a capital letter. The genus Aloe has about 400-500 species and numerous hybrids. "vera" is the species a group of very similar but probably not identical organisms (e.g. all humans are the same species: Homo sapiens) and should start with a lower case letter. The Latin name should be underlined or italicized. "Aloe vera" is NOT the generic term for any plant with rosettes of fleshy leaves! There are lots of leaf succulent rosette plants in a number of different families and even a few cacti that have large leaf-like tubercles (bumps on the stem) to really confuse you.

The first step is to make sure your plant actually is an Aloe vera as there are many plants that look rather like it. It's not that the occasional look-alike accidentally creeps in among the Aloe vera plants. Many of these leaf succulent rosette plants are perfectly good houseplants or garden perennials for warm climates so garden centres sell them (and seed companies sell the seeds) and people (even ones who know what these plants really are) grow or even collect them. It may well be more the case of picking the Aloe vera out from the other Aloes, Gasterias, Agaves etc.

Aloe has a (or often more than one) rosette of, pale green fleshy leaves with a few white spots on a short stem that's normally hidden in the middle. The leaves curl upwards to form an urn shape. It grows up to about 1m tall but is normally 20-30cm. There are small whitish teeth round the edge of the leaves. It is not a cactus and therefore does NOT have hairy patches (areoles) thus eliminating cacti with leaf like stems (e.g. Epiphyllum and Opuntia) or leaf like tubercles (e.g. Ariocarpus and Leuchtenbergia). The leaves on small plants are in a fan shaped arrangement (discidous) but if your plant has leaves 10cm long or more, still in this arrangement, you've probably got a different Aloe or a Gasteria. If you look in the centre of the rosette, you should be able to see progressively smaller leaves spiralling

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