When this very big, stemmed, feature cultivar opens its pastel orange-to-yellow flowers the whole garden gets a face lift. This happens just past midwinter and birds and bees go crazy for the bountiful new food source. Bountiful is an apt description for the masses of colourful racemes that crown the big rosette of this aloe from side to side.
Typically a young plant will start out stemless until the rosette is quite mature. By this time it will easily produce 4 or 5 well branched inflorescences, much to the delight of all that see it. After that the plant starts lifting off the ground on a stout stem. It will also split the rosette sooner or later, creating an even broader base for flower production. The multiple rosettes on the plant in the picture came about with the splitting of the original rosette and the re-splitting again. Mainly for this reason the plant is classified as “extra large”.
The plant is excellent for landscaping and for spacious gardens. It has grey-green leaves lined with pale, dark-tipped spines. I would recommend the removal of occasional stem shoots in the interest of plant health and speeding up division of the rosette. It should be planted away from trees to obtain the best colour and flower production.
Best recorded flowering performance from a single rosette: 5 simultaneous inflorescences with a total of 56 racemes.
Updated 9 June 2016.