Plant Profile: Aloe reitzii (Reitz's Aloe)

Latin name: Aloe reitzii var reitzii ("AL-oh RYEtz-ee-eye VAR RYEtz-ee-eye")
Common name: Reitz's Aloe
Originally from: A very small area on rocky slopes in the grasslands near the Belfast district of Mpumalanga in northern KwaZulu-Natal
Blooms: In summer a huge candelabra of red flowers emerges.
Light: Full sun
Water: Rain is plenty. No summer water needed.
Drainage: Excellent
Height x width: 3' tall x 3' wide
USDA Zones: 8 - 10
Where to find in P. Garden: In the middle front bed

Someone donated a little ceramic pot to the garden way back when we started. In the pot were several succulents, all stuck in place with glued-on gravel. Just the kind of desktop plant torture arrangement designed to be thrown away when the plants inevitably died.

I carefully picked off all the glue and gravel and separated out the plants. One of them was a small aloe of some kind. I potted it up and assumed it would die. To my surprise, it didn't. So it went in the middle front bed, looking very small and vulnerable.

I later found out it was an Aloe reitzii (Reitz's Aloe) - a stemless type of Aloe, that has a single rosette up to 3 feet tall, with long relatively broad silvery blue-green leaves with reddish teeth along the margins. A good medium-sized plant.

The great thing about this Aloe though is that it flowers in summer, unlike most Aloes which are winter flowering. And the flower is great - a huge branching candelabra of orangey-red down-curved flowers that lasts for ages. Every year ours gets more branches and a bigger flowering display.

The summer flowering habit makes it a useful plant in cold areas where the flowers of other Aloes often get frosted off in the winter.

This plant comes from a very small area on rocky slopes in the grasslands near the Belfast district of Mpumalanga in northern KwaZulu-Natal. The entire Belfast district is less than 14 square miles in size, and this Aloe occurs nowhere else.

There is also a winter-blooming form of this plant called Aloe reitzii var. vernalis that comes from The Vryheid District to the south. 

Aloe expert Dr Gilbert W. Reynolds made extensive field trips in search of Aloes in the 1930s-50s, covering more than 150,000 miles on the African continent, Madagascar, and beyond. A Mr. Francis William Reitz pointed out the Aloe to Reynolds, who named it after him in 1937 (or 1943, depending who you ask)

Mr. F. W. Reitz was either the then the South African Minister of Agriculture and nephew of the president of the Orange Free State, or said same president - they shared a name, and the accounts of this naming are vague.  One more reason botanists are rabid for Latin plant naming conventions and there's a lot of squabbling about which plant goes where I guess!

Reitz's Aloe is not difficult to cultivate in the garden or in a container - ours gets full sun and no water. It tolerates both frost (down to 20F) and fire in its natural habitat, and is easily propagated from seed (if you can get them.) Seed grown plants can flower in 5-7 years. Our plant first flowered in about 2009, so now in 2021 it's about 17-19 years old.