Aloe dyeri Schönland

Plants, usually solitary, acaulescent or with short stem. Leaves about 20, densely rosulate, lanceolate-attenuate, about 60-70 cm long, 10-15 cm broad at base, arcuate-spreading, gracefully recurved; upper surface canaliculate, green to yellowish-green, occasionally unspotted, usually with few or many very small elongated whitish spots varying from irregularly scattered to arranged more or less in interrupted undulating transverse bands; lower surface convex, pale green to greenish white, usually more copiously spotted throughout than the upper, the spots about 2 mm long, 1 mm broad, elongate, whitish, sometimes more or less arranged in transverse broken wavy bands, sometimes with a few indistinct longitudinal greenish lines especially near the margins; margins sinuate-dentate, with narrow semi-cartilaginous edge, armed with light-brown deltoid pungent teeth up to 5-6 mm long, 10-15 mm distant, the interspaces rounded. Inflorescence a branched panicle about 1.5 met. high (reaching 2 met. in very strong forms) usually rather compact, often 2 from a rosette, usually branched above the middle, with up to 15 branches the lowest of which sometimes with 2-4 branchlets producing a total of 30-40-50 racemes, the terminal the longest. Peduncle brown, lightly covered with a greyish powdery substance, flattened low down and up to 3-5 cm, diam., the branches often subtended at base by a large fleshy bract up to 12 cm long, 3 cm broad at base, with dentate margins in upper half. Racemes the terminal the longest, 20-25 cm, long, 9 cm diam., lateral racemes about 12-15 cm long, cylindric-acuminate, usually denser near apex, slightly laxer downwards. Bracts of lowest pedicels usually as long as their pedicels or slightly longer, narrowly deltoid-acuminate, thin, scarious, white, about 10-nerved, spreading to recurved, sometimes coiled in upper half. Pedicels lowest of terminal racemes 10-13 mm long. Perianth dull brick-red, averaging 35 mm long, with a basal swelling 9 mm diam., constricted above the ovary to 4-5 mm thence decurved and enlarging towards the throat (8 mm,), laterally compressed (5 mm), with the mouth somewhat roundly trigonous; outer segments free for 8 mm,, the free portion with whitish marginal border, obscurely nerved, the nerves confluent at apex, the apices sub-acute slightly spreading; inner segments themselves free, but dorsally cohering to the outer for their greater length, broader than the outer and with a whitish marginal border up to 2 mm broad, with 5-8 obscure nerves confluent at a somewhat light-brownish apex, the apices more obtuse, slightly spreading. Filaments filiform-flattened, the 3 inner narrower and lengthening in advance of the 3 outer, with their anthers in turn exserted up to 1 mm Style filiform, pale lemon, with the stigma at length exserted 1 mm. Ovary green, 8 mm long, 3 mm diam., finely 6-grooved. In shady creeks near Barberton plants flower in June, and when growing in dense bush the leaves assume a somewhat sickly green colour. At Waterval Boven, Schoemans Kloof and most other localities plants flower late in February to March, which is the usual flowering time for the species.