Hybrids of Aloe variegata are popular for their compact, beautifully mottled foliage, showy floriferousness and garden durability. This slow-growing hybrid displays all of these features and regularly elicits requests for plants from visitors to our nursery. The Gasteria parent is uncertain, but several features indicate that it may be G. brachyphylla: compact, slow growth; dark green, purple-blushed, smooth-surfaced leaves with few tubercles on the margins; floriferous, unbranched inflorescences bearing colorful red-orange, green-tipped flowers. The buds are distinctive with slender, ascending tips reminiscent of the early stages of the fruiting structures of Pilobolus, the Zygomycetous fungus familiar to all biology students who have seen it in the lab and which has even inspired the eponymous modern dance troupe. It might well have inspired a name for this cultivar, but the more obvious appearance of its stocky, muscular-looking rosettes won out. It is here published for the first time. Rooted offsets of HBG 39385, a plant received in Dec, 1977, from J. Catlin who obtained the clone from Alwin Berger’s son Fritz when he lived in Pasadena. $10.
Published in the Cactus and Succulent Journal, Vol. 76 (2), March - April, 2004