Aloe pictifolia

Aloe pictifolia is a small speckled aloe that grows from about three to seven leaf rosettes from a creeping or hanging stem.  The plant may grow several, slender rosettes, branching from the base. 

The leaves are long and narrow, blue-green, grey-green or even pinkish in colour with many small white spots densely scattered along both surfaces. There are small teeth on the margins only. The leaves curve downwards, sometimes also sideways; often not in a very symmetric or regular pattern. The specific epithet pictifolia means painted leaves, referring to the little white leaf spots.

The inflorescence is an unbranched conical raceme of up to 35 cm. The flowers are red, the perianths pendulous once they open. There is some yellow at the flower mouths. Flowering happens from before midwinter to early spring.

The distribution is very limited, a small area in the Eastern Cape northwest of Humansdorp and near Patensie, in the Kouga and Baviaanskloof Mountains, possibly also towards the Sunday's River.

The habitat is sheer or steep cliff faces in valley thicket. The plant is described as a cremnophile, a cliff lover. The species is rare, but the plant population is considered stable in habitat early in the twenty first century.

A. microstigma, a larger plant, has been compared to this aloe, but it flowers more profusely and the leaves are broader (Frandsen, 2017; Van Wyk and Smith, 2003; iNaturalist; http://redlist.sanbi.org).