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 pseudorubroviolacea commonly known as Arabian Aloe is a beautiful plant with 60cm wide rosettes of thick, blue-green leaves that emerge from heavy stems and 90 to 120 cm tall inflorescences of orange red flowers late winter into spring. Over time the stems elongate with a few shoots emerging at their bases, forming open sprawling clumps to 3.6 meters wide by 90 cm tall – if planted on a slope will tend to spread downhill. In winter, the foliage takes on pink tones much like Aloe rubroviolacea, whose specific epithet “rubraviolacea” means red-violet but this species differs in having larger rosettes that produce fewer offsets and more heavily branched inflorescence that appears later. Aloe rubroviolacea, often with an unbranched or once branched inflorescence, begins flowering in late autumn and continues into winter. This species, usually with a many branched inflorescence, starts flowering in late winter and continues into early spring in habitat. Both species have 2.5 cm long waxy orange-red flowers but for this species the flowers are more dramatically compressed downward along the inflorescence branch. This plant is also closely related to Aloe porphyrostachys. Plant in full sun in a well-drained soil – in its natural habitat this plant grows pendant or semi-pendant on steep slopes but can tolerate level ground if soil is well draining. Aloe pseudorubroviolacea is cold hardy down to -4°C. Protect from snails which can disfigure the attractive leaves. This aloe is restricted to high mountains and cliff faces between 1800 to 2100 meter elevation that overlook the coastal plain of the Red Sea in the provinces of Hijaz and Asir of Saudi Arabia from near the border with Yemen to north of Yanbu al-Bahr.