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You
may recall that I grow a number of the dwarf Aloe cultivars raised by
John Bleck and known as the ‘UCLA hybrids’ for the University of
California at Los Angeles. Many
of these were made available by the ISI at Huntington Gardens.
Recently more neat Aloe hybrids have become available to growers.
Stuart Riley from ‘Plantlife’ visits USA regularly and has
brought back plants raised by Kelly Griffin with very rugose leaves.
I have managed to obtain five of these and they are attractive
specimens. Four have yet to
flower, but the leaves are colourful and they, so far, grow well.
Looking
on the internet for more information I found a report on commercial
plant tissue culture at the IPPS annual meeting 2009: You can search
Google for more details of the work on many plant families, including
these horticulturally desirable Aloe cultivars.
The
first I obtained was Aloe ‘Pink Blush’, (left)which certainly
colours up well in bright light in the greenhouse.
It seems happy in my normal gritty compost, survived our last
cold winter and is growing well this year.
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Above:
Aloe
'Pink Blush'
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Whilst
visiting the excellent Zone Six show in May 2010 I noticed that Stuart
had some more cultivars for sale; so I invested in another two examples:
Aloe ‘Diego’ and Aloe ‘Silver Ridge’.
The former has chunky leaves with clear white epidermal
‘scales’ and teeth on the margins.
The latter is more buff coloured with longer leaves and shows
some pinker hues like A. ‘Pink Blush’.
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I
spoke to Stuart at this year’s Zone Six show at Dunchurch and he
explained why some cultivars appear to have two names.
Kelly Griffin nominated names for his inventions, but the nursery
that tissue cultured them to increase stock for commercial sale
registered some with plant breeder’s rights and different names.
For example ‘Vito’ became ‘Greensand’ and ‘Marco’
became ‘Fang’. You
should read the labels very carefully!
Stuart will be visiting our Branch in October and should have
more of these Aloe cultivars for sale; of course you need to be there to
grab some early Christmas gifts.
My
plants are all growing well and Aloe ‘Silver Ridge’ is flowering as
I write this. The
inflorescence is robust and the individual flowers neatly striped. (See
the cover
picture) If you like compact plants then seek out these
tissue-cultured examples of the hybridiser’s art, or maybe science.
Roland |
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Above:
Aloe 'Diego'
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Aloe
'Greensand' |
Aloe
'Silver Ridge' |
Aloe
'Fang' |
Ed:
Inspired
by Roland’s Aloes I have bought two. They are expensive! Of course if I
had taken the long view I would have bought different ones but I really
liked ’Greensand’ and ’Pink Blush’ . When I got them home I
repotted them, no problem until I realised that I didn’t know which
label went with which plant. My ‘Pink Blush’ is a little
‘Greensandy’ from shade at the moment. Luckily the teeth are quite
distinct so I was able to use these photos to sort them!
And
thanks Roland; that is a useful tip about the dual names, we don’t want
to buy the same thing twice! Not at these prices!
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