Aloinopsis malherbei

Aloinopsis malherbei

(This plant comes in a 3.5" pot. You will receive a very similar plant to the one in the picture. It may or may not be blooming at the time of your purchase. This plant is shipped in its pot to prevent any damage to the roots).

Aloinopsis malherbei is a cryptic perennial-succulent with flat, bluish-gray, fan-like, spatulate leaves similar in shape and texture to Aloinopsis spathulata and Titanopsis calcarea. All these species have blunt tips to their leaves, which are densely covered with prominent white tubercles. Clumps of these plants thus resemble the limestone outcrops amongst which they grow. In the wild, these plants are often overblown by fine soil, only the leaf margins visible.

Habit: It forms a thick, truncate rootstocks broadening and splitting into several small branching rosette with erect leaves up to 5 cm tall at the top.

Leaf: 18-25 mm long, 4-5 mm thick at base widening to 12-22 at the apex, erect, flat and wide, very broadly spatulate to fan-shaped, the apex more or less truncate, blue-gray, waxy, with prominent white tubercles along the round apical crescent extending onto the lower side of the leaf. Both surfaces with a slight covering of warts.

Flowers: Flower stalks 20-25 mm long. Flowers ebracteolate, 16-20 mm in diameter, petals salmon to pink or pale brown, stamens forming a cone, yellow in upper half.

Blooming season: The flowers are produced from mid-winter until early spring.

Fruits (Capsules): 8-11 locular, nearly globose, with a fat central columella, valve wings basally broad, ending distally in awns or narrow wings, closing bodies big, blocking the exit of the locule.

Seeds: Almost round in outline, 1.2-1.5 mm long, 1-1,4 mm broad, dark brown, testa cells dome-shaped.

Some of the information in this description has been found at desert-tropicals.com,  llifle.com and cactus-art.biz