Victim of its own success

This is what the eastern terminus of the L-shaped sidewalk bed in the front looked like just a few days ago:

Aloe ‘Moonglow’ at the far right was getting ready to burst into the biggest display of flowers it’s ever had. I did my best to count the individual racemes (flower heads) in the photo below and got to almost 50. The vigor of this hybrid is off the charts. It produces far more flowers than any other aloe I have. The flowers last a long time, too, making for a spectacular bloom season.

Imagine my surprise when I found this:

Aloe ‘Moonglow’ horizontal instead of vertical.

The cause is immediately apparent:

Between the leaves engorged from the December rains and the crazy number of flowers, the aloe was simply too heavy for its trunk. Something had to give.

Fortunately, this isn’t the end, just a temporary setback. Here’s what I did. First I made a clean cut:

Then I dug up the remaining trunk and at least some of the roots:

Normally I would simply leave the plant exposed to the air so the cut surface can dry and callus over. However, with a solid layer of fog that kept the sun away (yeah, again), nothing really dried out. That’s why I did something I’ve never done before: I applied a tree wound dressing. It’s some gummy material that looks like this:

I dug a new hole a little closer to the fence and wrestled the aloe (two heads!) into it. Then I tied it to the fence — actually to a metal fencepost set in concrete. It looks strong enough to hold up the plant while it re-roots.

I filled the hole with pumice to keep the stem as dry as possible and prevent rot. Hopefully the tree wound gunk will help protect the very bottom of it.

Here you can see the ties:

Amazing how in just a couple of days of being horizontal the racemes had already changed orientation. Now that ‘Moonglow’ is vertical again, they should straighten out in no time.

A number of leaves were broken, but to my amazement, I lost only two racemes.

So that’s where we are. I fully expect the flowers to start to open soon. They may not last as long as they otherwise would have, but we should still get a decent display.

For comparison, here’s a photo from late February 2025. I count maybe 25 racemes, so about half of what there is this year.

Late February 2025

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