Might be a Tillandsia. If so, the leaf bases will widened so as catch and retain water coming from above. It will want to have these kept filled.

The brown leaves are probably because of sun. For the smallest leaves do you refer to the outmost leaves or innermost leaves? When Aloe vera is short of water, their outer leaves will become thin and curved inward first. There can be 2 reasons for Aloe vera being short of water - either underwatered or overwatered. For underwater, just water it more. If the latter, it probably got rotted roots which makes the water in the pot unavailable to the plant. May I ask you what kind of soil or mix you put it in? If that's gritty mix or alike, it's not likely to be overwatered. In case you just put it in potting soil or even Cactus soil, you got to check if the soil is still wet inside. You can push a skewer down into your pot till its tip is closer to the pot bottom, wait a minute and pull it out to see if there's a lot moisture on the skewer. If it looks very damp or to the touch, you potting mix probably is not very fast draining. Got to make some change then.

Jennifer —-(Spraying with Neem Oil and or and other mixtures to eradicate the insects organically could still harm those beneficial insects. Some people will just let those pest stay on the tree because they dont want to harm them. Its a difficlt choice to make for some and you need to understand that some bad infestations that might get out of hand and could cause your trees to become weak and allow other diseses to slowly kill your tree. i always try and let Mother Nature work on the right balance of the pest verses the beneficial insets to keep everything in check. But sometimes i will have to step in and use more than organic to combact the problem. its up to you to decide what is best for your tree. Laura Even those that eat leaves ___ Katydids 🌺

Some people use neem oil, others use diluted Castile soap. I tried the soap but ended up going for a topical insecticide. If I could get my hands on a systemic I would use that, but in Canada I can't seem to find one. I wasn't super diligent about doing that regularly enough, so in the end I cut off any affected leaves. I read somewhere that thrips lay eggs in the leaf cell tissue so the eggs are fully protected from any topical applications. I now remove any leaf on a plant that looks to me to have pest damage. I think this practice is what got rid of the thrips. Then again, my watermelon peperomia has only one sad leaf now, so I don't expect you'll want to go that way. Can you post a picture of the underside of that leaf? Elena