Aloe ‘Spots ‘n Dots’

The aesthetic qualities of the ‘Spots ‘n Dots’ foliage make it one of the most sought after pot plants. In size it would fall between small and medium, so a pot of about 25 to 30cm in diameter is best suited to show off this aloe hybrid’s attributes.

The leaves are greyish (greener in younger plants) with numerous ‘spots and dots’, even more on the underside than the upper surface. It does not often produce stem shoots, but if they do occur they are best removed to retain the plants architectural shape.

Established plants are capable of putting on quite a flowering show, with loosely flowered red-to-yellow racemes on branched inflorescences opening from late summer throughout winter. The picture depicts a group of young plants with first flowers. More mature plants with bigger inflorescences and many racemes tend to open the flowers on the terminal raceme long before the side racemes do. In fact so long before that it may be possible to remove the spent terminal raceme and enjoy a second splash of colour from the same inflorescence (as can be seen in the second picture). This is quite an unusual feature for an aloe.

Incidentally, the plant in the seconde picture was already pushing a massive second inflorescence as big as the first.

Updated 18 April 2014