Aloe succotrina, Lam.

Klopper, Ronell R., Grace, Olwen M., Klopper, Arrie W., Smith, Gideon F. & Van, Abraham E., 2023, A taxonomic revision of Aloe sect. Purpurascentes (Asphodelaceae subfam. Alooideae), Phytotaxa 628 (1), pp. 1921-1935 : 1921-1935

Aloe succotrina

Aloe succotrina was described by Richard Weston (1770: 5) based on an illustration in Commelin (1697). It is restricted to mountain slopes on the Cape Peninsula with a disjunction to the Steenbras River mouth, Kleinmond, and Hermanus in the Western Cape, South Africa. It grows in mountain fynbos on steep cliffs and rocky slopes comprised of Table Mountain Sandstone, in a high winter-rainfall region with a Mediterranean-type climate, and always generally close to the sea (Klopper 2014).

The placement of A. succotrina in A. sect. Purpurascentes has been questioned ( Kemble 2011). It is argued that A. succotrina might have closer affinities with A. arborescens Miller (1768: 3) from A. sect. Arborescentes Salm-Reifferscheid-Dyck (1849: 26) than it has to other members of A. sect. Purpurascentes. Reasons for this include a strong resemblance to A. arborescens in terms of the size and shape of the floral bracts, the overall appearance of the racemes, the white marginal teeth on the leaves, and the appearance of the seed (S.J. Marais, pers. comm.). Furthermore, A. succotrina has a confused history and wrong synonymy that is probably rivalled by no other aloe (Guiglielmone et al. 2009, Walker et al. 2015). This is mostly due to early authors incorrectly assuming that this plant is from the Indian Ocean island of Socotra ( Reynolds 1950, Guglielmone et al. 2009).

Historically, disjunct distributions of the species that also exhibit morphological differences, were considered to be separate species: plants growing on the Cape Peninsula were regarded as A. succotrina , while plants from Hermanus, Kleinmond, and other mainland localities were treated as A. purpurascens ( Aiton 1789: 466) Haworth (1804: 20) . Haworth (1804) gives the differences as follows: A. succotrina —leaves ensiform, virescent with tips subincurved, marginal teeth numerous, small, white; A. purpurascens — leaves ensiform, glaucous with tips recurved, marginal teeth white. Haworth (1804) also remarked under both names that the stems of these aloes become dichotomous with age, but lacks the radical offsets present in other members of A. sect. Grandiflorae Haworth (1804: 14) , in which he included them. Reynolds (1950) concluded that these are merely geographical variants in growth forms and do not warrant distinction at either specific or varietal level.