#aloeae

Indoor Sun Shoppe posted that they had these Haworthias and I internally screamed because I was looking at them on Etsy. These ones are small ones for only $5.50 as well! They weren’t shipped with labels but I think the purple one might be Haworthia springbokvalensis and the green one with circuit board designs is Haworthia emelyae var. comptoniana. Haworthia species are super variable and tend to run together and make it hard to get id.

These look like fake plants from a sci fi, and they definitely seem like they’d be important for your player character to put into their inventory for plot reasons. 👀

Haworthiopsis attenuata variegata

Haworthia is a genus of Southern African plants belonging to the family Asphodelaceae and belonging to the group Aloeae, or the Aloe “family” alongside other genera like Gasteria and Haworthiopsis.

Haworthia are small succulent plants which usually have transparent windows on their leaves. The fenestrated leaves in Haworthia are used to aid in allowing light through for photosynthesis while the plants are partially buried in the wild as protection from the heat; when it becomes too dry, Haworthia have thick, fleshy roots (slide 3) which contract, pulling the plants underground.

Care for these is fairly simple. Mostly you have to follow the typical succulent regimen of well drained media and waiting for the pot to dry out. For a lot of species you can give the leaves a gentle squeeze to see if they need water, as they get noticeably more slack when thirsty. Haworthia like bright-ish light, but not too much. They’re more adapted for part shade situations and burn easily in direct sunlight, which exception to species like H. truncata which are able to tolerate full sun fairly well, and in general I notice that retuse Haworthia tend to fair better. This also makes them good windowsill plants for folks who don’t necessarily have the conditions for high light cactuses like prickly pears. A lot of retuse Haworthia like being kept cooler and drier during the winter, or they won’t stimulate root growth, as I found out the hard way and didn’t learn until recently.

I became obsessed with these after seeing a Haworthia truncata in the Volunteer Park Conservatory in 2015-ish and now have lots of plants from the genus including two H. truncata!

1) Haworthia springbokvalensis ‘Crystal Ball

2) H. emelyae var. comptoniana

3) H. emelyae showing off the thick root system of the genus

4) H. cymbiformis var setulifera

5) H. mutica otzenii

6) H. marumiana var. batesiana

7) H. truncata

My Spiral Aloe baby (Aloe polyphylla, 18 months) is finally spiraling! It looks like it’s a right handed spiral. What do you think?