Aloe comosa

Aloe comosa, commonly called the Clanwilliam aloe, is a tree aloe in the family Asphodelaceae and is endemic to South Africa, where it grows in a very small area of the Western Cape province. It was first found in the Olifants River Valley in 1905, north of the town of Clanwilliam, which gave the plant its common name. It has a single unbranched stem that can reach about 3 metres and keeps its dry dead leaves as a tangled skirt below a rosette of thick, succulent, lance-shaped leaves with brown-red teeth along the edges. Summer flower stems can reach 2 metres and carry dense spikes of rosy-cream to ivory-pink flowers, pollinated mainly by bees. The botanical name was published by the German botanists Alwin Berger and Rudolf Marloth. Unlike some aloes it is not used as a medicine and is grown mainly as an ornamental and a collector's plant.