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Blood Aloe

Kumara haemanthifolia

Blood Aloe
Photo: Abu Shawka, CC0

Blood Aloe is a small, stemless, clump-forming succulent from the high mountain fynbos of the Western Cape, South Africa, with grey-green fan-shaped leaves edged red and bright scarlet winter flowers. It is considered difficult to grow, and it does best in very free-draining pumice and cool, wet-winter conditions.

Family
Asphodelaceae (Aloe family)
Grows as
Succulent
Light
Full sun, Part shade
Water
Water sparingly during the growing season and keep almost dry in summer; it prefers winter rainfall.
Soil
Pure pumice or another very fast-draining mineral mix.
Temperature
Cool conditions suit it; tolerates frost in habitat, protect from prolonged heat and wet heat.
How easy
Hard
Native range
SW. Cape Prov.
Climate
subtropical

About

Kumara haemanthifolia is a species of flowering plant in the family Asphodelaceae. It is a rare species of succulent plant, native to a few high, inaccessible mountain peaks in the Fynbos habitat of Western Cape, South Africa.

How to grow it

It has the reputation for being a very difficult plant to cultivate. However, growers in similar climates have reportedly had success using a growing medium of pure pumice.

Where it grows

Its natural range also nearly matches that of Kumara plicatilis (being the mountainous area from Stellenbosch through to Ceres) but Kumara haemanthifolia occurs further up on the mountain peaks than its larger sister species. The plant seems to prefer cold south-facing slopes with heavy winter rainfall. It grows in sheltered cracks in sandstone ridges, forming dense clumps.

Other Kumara plants

Kumara plicatilis · Fan Aloes

Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Kumara haemanthifolia by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.

The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.

Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.

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