Plant in full sun to light shade and irrigate infrequently - this is a winter dormant aloe but seems to tolerate winter rainfall if planted in a well-drained soil. Although from the warmer and more tropical climate this plant has proven hardy in California gardens to temperatures in the mid 20s ° F - we have not seen any winter damage on our original stock plant that we have had unprotected in our nursery garden since 1997.

Aloe tomentosa comes from fairly high elevations (7,500 to 10,000 feet) on steep slopes in the Arabian Peninsula. The name Aloe comes from ancient Greek name aloe that was derived from the Arabian word 'alloch' that was used to describe the plant or its juice that was used as medicine and its specific epithet is a reference to its hairy tomentose flowers.

Our plants originally came from seed off of a plant the International Succulent Introduction program distributed in 1983 as an unknown species listed as ISI 1383 Aloe aff doci Lavranos that was collected by John Lavranos and Len Newton in mountainous areas of Wadi Dhahr, Yemen. It was later determined that this plant was Aloe tomentosa. Our thanks to John Trager at the Huntington Botanical Garden for the first plant of this species we had from 1996 and to Brian Kemble of The Ruth Bancroft Garden for supplying us with the seed in 2004 that he collected of this wonderful and unusual aloe when it flowered at the Ruth Bancroft Garden in 1999. It was from these two sources that all our later crops propagated vegetatively of Aloe tomentosa came from.

In 2006 we had our stock plants flower in later years we collected seed from these plants. Thinking that we had no other aloes flowering at the same time we grew a seedling crop between 2007 and 2011 that we sold first as Aloe tomentosa, but as we noted variability in color of the flowers (that were still interestingly fuzzy) ranging from a pale yellow to orange we discontinued propagating this plant from seed and changed our listing of these seedlings to Aloe tomentosa hybrids. Because of the flower color some mistakenly believed these hybrid plants might actually be Aloe lavranosii, but while we also had this species in our collection, we never offered it up for sale. 

Information displayed on this page about Aloe tomentosa is based on our research conducted about this plant in our nursery library as well as from information provided by reliable online resources. We also include our own observations made about it as it has grown in the nursery gardens and other gardens visited, as well how the crops of this plant performed in the containers in our nursery field. We will also include comments received from others and welcome hearing from anyone who has information about this plant, particularly if it includes cultural information aiding others to better grow it.