Aloe flowers

    Aloe flowers
    Author: Ivan Lätti
    Photographer: Johannes Vogel

    Aloes generally produce many-flowered inflorescences annually from their succulent leaf rosettes. Inflorescences may branch into panicles of multiple racemes on shared peduncles. 

    The mostly tubular flowers are small, often stalked and bract subtended on cylindrical axes called racemes. The individual flowers or florets have six-segmented perianths similar to lily flower structure.

    Two groups of three stamens typically grow from inside the base of the six perianth segments arranged in two concentric whorls of three each. Right in the centre of the flower or floret there is an ovary at the base, topped by a somewhat cylindrical style inside the perianth tube, ending in a stigma that may be exserted beyond the perianth's lobes as do the anthers topping the stamens.

    Pollination ensures male pollen from anthers to reach stigmas for transportation to ovaries, where entry into ovules precedes seed formation.  

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