Aloe comptonii

Aloe comptonii is one of the creeping aloes. This means that it has one or more rosettes facing up, stemless or variably long stems lying on the ground when the plants are old, sometimes as long as 1 m. 

The leaves of A. comptonii are blue-green, narrowly triangular with teeth only on the margins. These teeth are conical, white and blunt.

The raceme is short, cone-shaped and densely stacked with long, thin, red perianths, pendulous when open. The plants bloom in spring and summer, presenting single racemes or branched panicles of up to eight racemes. 

The species distribution is in the Western Cape from Montagu to at least Jansenville in the Eastern Cape. There is a difference between stemless A. comptonii plants in the east of the species distribution in the Karoo and Eastern Cape and ones with stems in the west, the Little Karoo and Great Karoo. The plant was at one stage associated with or sunk into A. perfoliata.

This plant was photographed in Meiringspoort where it hangs over the edge of a rock by the roadside; in the region where one would expect stems. Notice how long some of them are. All seen here may be just one plant and probably quite old.

The habitat is fynbos, succulent Karoo and Albany thicket on rocky flats, slopes and cliffs. The species is not considered threatened in habitat early in the twenty first century (Van Wyk and Smith, 2003; iNaturalist; http://redlist.sanbi.org).