Aloe Species, Cat's Tail Aloe

I got my plant from a member of the Aloe Forum on Yahoo a few years back. It is now about 3' to 4' tall, with 2 heads. It is being tota...Read Morelly engulfed/smashed by a zillion Bromelia Balansae that spread across an entire large planting bed like wildfire... And it still grows. This past winter (2009/2010) has been one of the worst ever on record here in Brunswick, GA, with one "stretch" of 13 nights in a row of freezing weather. I didn't cover it, as it's impossible to get to being surrounded by the heart of flame plants, and it's still trucking right along! It has been down to 18*F a handful of times since I've owned it, and it has never received any damage. It is planted in full sun, and a sprinkler head on a riser ended up being placed about 2 or 3 feet from it, so it gets blasted with water. Doesn't phase it. That's my experience with Aloe castanea....

Surprisingly tolerant of desert sun that, in the yard here, blasts from the west! It grows near a tree that shades it through most of th...Read Moree mid-day, but hasn't had trouble with the heat. Still too small to flower for me, but a larger specimen in Phoenix flowers reliably every year. Seems decently hardy to at least 23F as well and flat ground doesn't appear to be an issue.

one of the suckering and profuesly branching 'tree' aloes- makes an attractive clump if pruned a bit. From South Africa. Has red-brown ...Read Moreflowers that, on some plants, have a unique aspect of growing somewhat laterally from the plant in long, simple snake-like stalks. Some forms have a more upright, coiled and twisted shape. And yet others have flowered with more rose colored racemes.

Some years are better than other for this species in southern California, and sometimes these barely bloom at all, while other years they go nuts... a bit finicky for a blooming aloe.