Aloe suprafoliata

Aloe suprafoliata, commonly the book-leaved aloe, is usually solitary and stemless. This is an attractive aloe that flowers early. The specific name, suprafoliata, is derived from the Latin words supra meaning above and folium meaning leaf, referring to the distinctive young plant characteristic of earliest leaves being distichous, meaning two vertical ranks of opposite leaves are produced, only spiralling into a rosette in maturity after some years.

The leaves, about 30 growing in a dense rosette on a mature plant, are slenderly lance-shaped, tapering to acutely pointed tips. The surfaces are smooth, the upper one flat to channelled, the lower one convex. Red-brown marginal teeth are spaced, triangular in shape, sometimes two-tipped. The leaves are sometimes strongly recurved, otherwise about straight.

Up to three simple racemes may grow simultaneously, the peduncles flattened ow down. The narrowly conical to cylindrical racemes produce rose red to scarlet flowers, cylindrical to angled, covered in a faint bloom and green-tipped. Pedicels elongate in the fruiting stage to about 3 cm. Flowering happens from late autumn to after midwinter. 

The species distribution is in northern KwaZulu-Natal, Swaziland and a little into southeastern Mpumalanga. The photo was taken in the Walter Sisulu National Botanical Garden.

The plants' habitat is cool, rocky slope grassland and bushveld, often at high altitude, from 300 m to 1600 m. Mist and cloud are typical of this environment. The species is not considered threatened in habitat early in the twenty first century (Frandsen, 2017; Van Wyk and Smith, 2003; Reynolds, 1974; Jeppe, 1969; iNaturalist; http://redlist.sanbi.org).