Aloe integra

Aloe integra is a small grass aloe reaching heights to about 15 cm in leaf, 50 cm in flower. The plants grow solitary or form small groups, as older plants clump from several stemless leaf rosettes. 

The leaves are glossy green. The leaf margins are white and cartilaginous, usually without teeth, otherwise with tiny teeth. The specific name, integra, is a word in Latin and several other languages with various meanings, one of them being entire, suggesting without teeth in the botanical sense of toothless leaf margins. In winter the leaves die back, the dead leaves or damaged leaf tips remaining in several layers upon the plants. 

Several single or unbranched and shortly round-topped racemes comprising many yellow flowers may arise from one mature leaf rosette. Open flowers nod. Flowering happens in spring and summer, often shortly after the winter grass fires. The flowering season changes to some extent in accordance with the timing of these all too regular fires. 

One finds this plant in Mpumalanga from Carolina to Pilgrim's Rest, west of the Kruger National Park and in Swaziland near the escarpment.

The habitat is montane grassland at altitudes around 1500 m, the plants commonly seen on north-facing, short grass slopes. The species is considered vulnerable in habitat early in the twenty first century, due to habitat loss from timber plantations and exotic vegetation infestation (Frandsen, 2017; Craib, 2005; Van Wyk and Smith, 2003; http://redlist.sanbi.org).