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Aloe mawii "Mozambique Form" (Khuzi) - This aloe species has a couple of distinct forms with this one more shrubby and the other more like a small tree that is unbranched at the base or only sparingly branched but both grow up to about 6 feet tall and both forms have dense rosettes of 2 foot long red tinged grey-green leaves that are 3 to 4 inches wide at the base and tapper to recurved narrowed tips with reddish margins and orange-brown teeth. In mid-winter (January-February) in Southern California, when the foliage is often entirely red, appear the long inflorescences arching outward with reddish orange flowers held horizontally facing upward on one side of the stem (secund) with exerted blue-purple stamens tipped with orange anthers - quite attractive and unusual!
Plant in full sun in a well-drained soil and irrigate occasionally to infrequently. Cold hardy for short duration to around 25° F - has sustained damage at 27° F in Ojai California, so likely best for coastal gardens or more frost-free locations.
The type locality is on the Zomba Plateau in Malawi, and it is here that the more small tree-like form grows, but it also grows into Mozambique and southern Tanzania, where it can be found on grassy rocky slopes at altitudes between 1,800 and 6,000 feet. The form from the Mozambique area is a more lower branching and shrubby form and to distinguish it from the tree form we list it as Aloe mawii "Mozambique Form" and list the other as Aloe mawii "Malawi Form". In previous years, since 2017, we have just had the shrubby form of the species available, so just listed this one form as Aloe mawii, but in 2023 we put out in the field some of the tree form that we had in our collection, so needed a way to distinguish them and made this change in how we list them. The specific epithet honors Captain A.H. Maw, on whose property in Malawi the type specimen was collected. Common names include Chinthembwe (Nyanja, Tumbuka), Khuzi (Ngoni) and lichongwe (Yao). Our crops of the more tree-like form of this species originated as from cuttings received as Aloe mawii IAS12-019c from the Institute of Aloe Studies (IAS) in 2012 but these more shrubby Mozambique Form plants were grown from seed purchased in August 2015 from RarePalm.com.
This information about Aloe mawii "Mozambique Form" displayed is based on research conducted in our horticultural library and from reliable online resources. We also will relate observations made about it as it grows in our nursery gardens and other gardens we have visited, as well how the crops have performed in containers in our nursery field. We will also incorporate comments that we receive from others and we welcome hearing from anyone with additional information, particularly if they can share any cultural information that would aid others in growing it.
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