Mature aloe

It's not just a sunburn soother. Grown at home, aloe vera can provide some tropical flair to your desktop or garden as an easy-going succulent. Keep your potted friend happy with these quick care tips. Good news for black thumbs : Aloe has won over many home gardeners for its hardiness and tolerance of forgetful waterers.

You could have knocked me over with a feather: my local supermarket now sells leaves of aloe vera Aloe vera in the produce section! Certainly a good 30 years. My mother plant which I still have has moved with me 4 times, putting up with more negligence than pretty much any other plant. And I know dozens of people who could tell similar stories. A juvenile: note the fan-shaped habit, the spotted leaves and the numerous offsets. Of course, my adult aloe looks little like the tiny plant a neighbor gave me all those years ago.

Aloe vera plants are famous for producing a gel contained in many lotions meant to heal your skin or keep it feeling smooth. But they are good for more than the medicinal benefits that you get from their gel. They have another beneficial impact on our health: they improve air quality.

Aloe vera is a hardy succulent semi-tropical plant which is native to North Africa and the SW Arabian Peninsula, but at the present time can almost be found worldwide. The thick leaves contain a gel which is commonly used externally to treat skin irritation, minor burns, sunburns, itching due to allergies and insect bites, sores and skin ulcers. Aloe vera is possibly the oldest and the most used medicinal plant worldwide, its recorded medicinal use dates back historically to well over 2, years. There is a growing interest in the health benefits of Aloe vera juice currently, and as a result some people are deciding to grow their own plants for the purpose. Lets look at the differences between the Aloe vera varieties, so we can distinguish the edible variety from the non-edible one.