This miniature species is the smallest of a group of Somalian aloes with clean, glossy, dark-green foliage ornamented with white spots. Rosettes are only about 4" across but clump to form attractive mounds. Inflorescences are simple racemes to about 1' tall bearing dusky, pinkish-red flowers. We offer tissue-cultured plants of the type collection, Peter R. O. Bally 11719, collected Oct 20, 1957, in northern Somalia, on Ga’an Libah (the same mountain where Aloe hildebrandtii occurs), at Gerbakele, at 5500', where it grew in dense clumps, usually in the shelter of Buxus hildebrandtii, at the edge of the escarpment. HBG 16668. $8.
Published in the Cactus and Succulent Journal, Vol. 91 (2), Summer 2019