Aloes are very popular and some of the most rewarding plants to cultivate. They make excellent accent plants owing to their often strange and inspiring architectures, as well as the bright flowers that offset the grey-green leaves. They are also very suitable as container plants and small aloes can be used very effectively as border plants at the edge of a bed. Although aloes are most often included in rockeries, their application in horticulture is not limited to this feature and they can be used in almost any setting and in conjunction with most common garden plants. Their natural adaptation to harsh and often arid climates makes aloes outstanding subjects for the water-wise garden. Aloe is a genus in the Asphodeloideae family containing about 600 species of flowering succulent plants. Aloes are sometimes confused with Agaves. Contrarily to Agaves, Aloe leaves contain a gel like sap. Another difference is that Aloes don’t die after blooming as most Agaves do.

Aloe macrosiphon is an attractive speckled stemless aloe from Tanzania and neighbouring African countries. It is a suckering aloe that forms dense groups of erect compact rosettes of thin, plastic-like lime green to dark green leaves with spots, which show a bit of red when the plants are under stress of cold and drought. The flowers of Aloe macrosiphon is dusky dull red to bright red with some strains showing yellow at the flower tips. The inflorescence is multibranched and not complex. Aloe macrosiphon is rare in the wild and in cultivation. It will grow well in pots and rockeries. Aloe macrosiphon prefers full sun to partial shade. Plants grown in full sun will flower more profusely whereas plants grown in partial shade will be more proliferous in growing leaves and forming pups, also known as off-sets.