Aloe medusa versus Aloe barberae

[Chuck]

Hi,

I've seen Aloe medusa being sold at nurseries as Aloe barberae. Is there an easy way to tell which type it actually is?

Thanks,

Chuck

[STEVE IN SOCAL]

Medusa usually brings more money that Barbarae...odd they would sell it at Barbarae prices.

[Kelly Griffin]

The Medusa is smaller and branches more (hence the name.. like Medusa's head) and the flower is less peach colored and more of an apricot color.

I could speculate and say that perhaps Medusa is Aloe eminens which is a much more northern form if you will of barberae (syn bainsii)

Without provenance it really is just that......speculation. It truly helps to know where the plants come from and keep the locality data with significant collections.

Regards,

KellyG

[John Trager]

Hi Kelly,

When we distributed Aloe "medusa" as A. barberae ISI 2005-8 I was able to dig up some provenance. See the following link for the my take: ISI | Aloe barberae DYER.

Regards, John

[Tim Harvey]

John,

My seedlings from that batch are now 6-7 feet tall (Karen has one) and very similar to regular bainesii. Do you know of any other large ones around?

T

[palmbob]

Originally Posted by Zigur

John,

My seedlings from that batch are now 6-7 feet tall (Karen has one) and very similar to regular bainesii. Do you know of any other large ones around?

T

What do you mean by large? I have seen trees 10 years old and they are still not large if you mean barberae-large... though obviously they are tree aloes. I don't think they look like Aloe barberae, though they look more like A barberae than any other named Aloe (except perhaps for A eminens). Still they are quite easy to tell apart in their much thinner stems, thinner leaves, complex branching (not so 'dichotomous), upright pale orange flowers and much slower rate of growth. Cold hardiness is identical from what I can tell (both wimpy for aloes). And these individuals (and there are lots of them around southern California) are consistently alike, and consistently dislike Aloe barberae to be unlikely a natural variation of the same species. I saw some 'large' ones at Rancho Soledad (about 15' tall) and they looked like absurdly stretched versions of the same ones we see around here... nothing like the massive Aloe barberae shape.

[Tim Harvey]

As I said, I am talking about plants from the 2005 ISI offering. To help you with the subtraction, they would be almost 5 years old at this point.

[palmbob]

Originally Posted by Zigur

As I said, I am talking about plants from the 2005 ISI offering. To help you with the subtraction, they would be almost 5 years old at this point.

sorry, didn't know the conversation was limited to those individuals. There are obviously a lot more plants in circulation than those ones. Don't know anything specifically about those plants. Where can I see a photo of those ones? Are they turning out to be big beefy plants? A five year old Aloe barberae would be a pretty huge plant by now.

[Tim Harvey]

Originally Posted by palmbob

sorry, didn't know the conversation was limited to those individuals. There are obviously a lot more plants in circulation than those ones. Don't know anything specifically about those plants. Where can I see a photo of those ones? Are they turning out to be big beefy plants? A five year old Aloe barberae would be a pretty huge plant by now.

It is not limited to the ISI plants, but since you replied to my post as opposed to any of the others I assumed you were referring to them.

They seem to be too big too soon, to come back to my original post.

[palmbob]

Originally Posted by Zigur

It is not limited to the ISI plants, but since you replied to my post as opposed to any of the others I assumed you were referring to them.

They seem to be too big too soon, to come back to my original post.

Am new to this forum and was just replying in order... I see now that we can reply specifically to any post... I get it now. sorry for the confusion.

[John Trager]

As far as I know all A. "medusa" in cultivation trace their origin to Kevin Conniff ex Singer's ex Lavranos seed. Kevin recently sent me a photo of mature plants at his nursery used as small "street trees":


.

[Tim Harvey]

Originally Posted by John Trager

As far as I know all A. "medusa" in cultivation trace their origin to Kevin Conniff ex Singer's ex Lavranos seed. Kevin recently sent me a photo of mature plants at his nursery used as small "street trees":


.

So did he produce the seed/plants for the ISI distribution?

T

[John Trager]

Indirectly. We produced the seed by controlled pollination of the two plants that Kevin gave us. Kevin later supplies us some additional seedlings.

[Brian Kemble]

Thought I'd toss in my experience with A. barberae and A 'Medusa' in San Francisco. I planted A. barberae in my neighbor's yard in the mid-eighties, and it got damaged (dead spot on the trunk) in our freeze of late 1990. It does not get as much sun as it might like, since it is between buildings, and it also gets less heat than it would like due to the foggy climkate, so it has grown slowly. It is now about 15 feet tall with about a dozen heads, and it has only this winter decided that it feels mature enough to flower. In 1997 or 1998 Kevin Coniff brought me a 15-gallon plant of A. 'Medusa' which I planted near to the barberae. It has grown much faster, and though it is not as tall as the barberae it has branched like mad and now has more than 50 heads and is wider than it is tall. As others have said, the branches are definitely more slender than those of the barberae and the leaves are not as wide or long. Oddly enough, it never flowers in spite of all the growth it has put on.
When in Hawaii at Christmas, I visited the botanical garden at Koko Crater together with Nathan Wong (Nathan is on the staff of the Honolulu Botanical Garden, though he does not work at the Koko Crater garden). We looked in on the plants of Aloe eminens there, and I was pleased to see that the mesquite trees had been cleared from around the Aloes, so that for the first time in decades they are standing in the open. There were no flowers present, but I have seen them in flower previously and their flowers are red (in contrast, I would describe those of A. 'Medusa' as yellow-orange, and those of barberae as pink or salmon). The branches of the eminens plants are more slender, like those of 'Medusa', but it will be interesting to see if they become thicker in the future as a result of the increased light. The form of the inflorescence on the eminens plants is a good match to 'Medusa', with the racemes seeming to be a little more capitate and held farther out from the leaves compared to barberae. But the 3 plants are obviously very close, and my theory is that Aloe eminens actually originated in southern Mozambique and was introduced to Somalia by Arab traders in antiquity, and it has taken up residence there. If this is correct, then A. eminens and A. 'Medusa' would represent 2 different forms (or varieties or subspecies) of Aloe barberae from the northern part of its range. More field work in Mozambique is called for to help sort this out!

[Chuck]

I guess I need some help identifying my plant. I picked it up from a local nursery labeled as "Aloe bainesii" with a tag from the wholesaler "Marilynns Garden". I have seen the same plant for sale at other nurseries in the San Francisco Bay area. I planted the aloe in the ground about a year and a half ago. Pictures are attached. What do you think? What aloe is this? Since then I've noticed that plants I know to be barberae seem to have a white cuticle on the edges of the leaves where they join the stem. (My plant does not.) Is this a distinguishing characteristic of barberae?

[aloenut]

Hi Chuck,
Your plant looks like it may be A thraskii or have thraskii as a parent. All of the barberae I have seen do have the white where the leaf meets the stem.

Cheers,

John

[Brian Kemble]

I agree with John that the Aloe in the photos looks like A. thraskii, and is certainly not A. barberae (or 'Medusa' or eminens; all of these have the white edge on the part of the leaf that clasps the stem). Note that A. thraskii will not branch as barberae does.

[Chuck]

Thanks for the quick replies. As I have been reading more, I have been thinking A. thraskii myself for a while. Good to get some other verification. This plant was purchased at Yamagami's in Cupertino. I've also recently seen the same plant for sale at Flora Grubb in SF. I'm not sure who the wholesaler was in that case. I kind of expect mislabeling at big chain store nurseries, but not smallers one. All part of the learning experience.

[Brian Kemble]

You should not be surprised to find incorrectly labeled plants at smaller nurseries as well as large chains. After all, a place such as Flora Grubb carries all manner of plants from palms to shrubs to bamboo to succulents and so forth, and it is unrealistic to expect them to be experts in every genus. They take the word of the person who supplies the plants unless they have reason to think differently, and sometimes this is not correct. Even plant sales at HBG or SF Botanical Garden or the Ruth Bancroft Garden sometimes have wrongly labeled plants due to errors made by volunteers or switched tags, etc.

[xerophyte_nyc]

If that plant is thraskii, how much more growth is needed until it starts to resemble a mature thraskii with larger and more recurved leaves? It looks kind of wimpy as a young plant.

x

[Tim Harvey]

First flowering of ISI 2005-08 ... doesn't look like barberae 'Medusa', or does it?

Either the plant pictured is a hybrid, the result of not-so-controlled pollination, or the parent plants were hybrids (possibly F1), so the progeny show differences. Thoughts anyone?

T

[Brian Kemble]

Tim,
The plant certainly looks like 'Medusa', but the flowers are pink instead of yellow-orange. The form of the inflorescence (as much as one can see from the photo) looks like that of 'Medusa', with short floral branches which bend like a "J". If the plant is a hybrid, it seems to me from its appearance that the other parent would likely be A. barberae (the regular pink form), because parentage involving most other aloes would result in a plant which no longer looked so much like 'Medusa' vegetatively. But let's consider an alternative. Perhaps the ISI plants have some genetic variability, and some come out with yellow-orange flowers while others come out with pink flowers. In this case, they could be pure rather than hybrid. Has anyone else flowered one of the ISI plants who could advise us as to what the color was? Also, the ISI listing says the seed used in growing the plants was obtained by cross-pollination of 2 plants from Kevin Coniff. How many clones did Kevin start with, and have his plants been grown from seed or cuttings? Was ISI certain that their 2 accessions were actually clonally different? So many questions. . .

[Tim Harvey]

Thanks Brian - at least nobody gave me grief for the hint of Aloe mite showing! The flowers have a hard time getting through the leaves, and seem to come out sideways as far as I can tell. Need to get a ladder on there so I can pollinate ...

Karen has its twin - anything there Karen???

T

[desert_gardener]

Tim, I have one from that 2005 offering pictured here. This was taken back in October and is even taller now. It has yet to bloom for me, but I will keep my eye out as we are sometimes just weeks behind you folks in CA.

[John Trager]

Tim’s photo does raise questions. The flowers on his plant are certainly more the pinkish of typical A. barberae suggesting hybridization with the latter. I can confirm that the ISI offering was from controlled pollination of two clones from Kevin Coniff and that the pollination was performed in December when normal A. barberae was not yet in flower. Therefore, that eliminates this first possible explanation.
I should clarify that the level of control involved saturating the stigmas of plants in the garden with the desired pollen. Flowers we not bagged to exclude pollinators either before or after pollination. Therefore, another possibility is that hummingbirds brought in pollen of another parent or parents. The uniformity of the progeny gave no indication of this at the time of the ISI offering. This argues against hybridization unless hummingbirds achieved their own degree of pollen saturation with one kind of pollen. More likely, however, is that hummingbird activity would have contributed only a proportion, and a diverse one at that, of pollen thereby diluting my efforts but not completely swamping them.
A likely alternate parent might be A. arborescens which would have been in flower in December in other parts of the Desert Garden though a number of other aloes are flowering at that time as well. Hybrid seedlings might not distinguishable from “true” ones but could mature into plants displaying the robustness of hybrid vigor yet the arborescent dominance of A. barberae like Tim’s and Gay’s (aka Desert_Gardener). Time will tell how many plants of ISI 2005-8 display hybrid characteristics … and I will place less faith in the pollen saturation technique of (not-so-)controlled pollination.