An update: Having spoken to a couple of professional growers with extensive experience in aloe culture, I showed them pictures of my plants and was told that mine are indeed a.p., in spite of one plant showing an offset. Phew! In addition I believe it is possible to tell whether a young plant is a lefty or righty, as follows. (I'm told that if you hold your left hand over the center of the plant with thumb pointing straight down, cup your fingers a little, and if the spiral pattern matches the arc formed by your fingers, the plant is a leftie. A right hand spiral is defined by the same technique with the right hand and fingers.) Having defined that, if you look closely at the structure of a leaf on a mature plant, you should see that one edge of the leaf is a simple, sharp "V" shape, while the other edge of the leaf is a sort of flattened/"blunt" angle. A cross section of the leaf would show that the leaf has an outline defined by 4 angles, resembling a single-edged blade. If you are looking at a leaf on the nearest side of the plant, a "sharp" angle on the left edge of the leaf would indicate a right handed plant, as defined above, and vice versa. I think this differential can be observed on plants as small as 4" (~10cm) diameter. Anyway, this is a minor detail, but I enjoyed figuring it out, assuming I got it right. If my observations are wrong, let me know! I attached an article on a.p. culture that was very interesting--great pictures too! Thanks, --Rick in CT Here is a link that might be useful: aloe polyphylla culture and pictures.

Thanks a lot Madabouteu, Mine does have some spotting, I'd have to take a closer look to see if it has spotting on the lower surfaces. The color of mine is powdery blue-green and the teeth are on the edges and an ocassional spine is on the front or back side of the leaves. Right now, it's under some stress and the leaf tips are reddish. Here are some pictures with the aloe in question in them from a couple of month ago: The unknown aloe is to the right of the path next to the red flowering pelargonium And here's another picture with that aloe in it. It's partially covered by the barrel.

ok so i cut off the top section before christmas and now the bottom section looks like the top did a few weeks ago. it looks like it is dying from the top down. now there is only about 6 inches of green left and even that is spotty. so my question now is should i cut it off where the green stops or will this send it into total shock? i guess it's already passed into total shock so how much worse could it be. is it possible that this was all caused by lack of water? I was afraid to water it for a few weeks after the incident since it got too much moisture from the snow. but i started watering it in small amounts after i cut off the top and it seems to be holding on longer than it did before. The top turned from just sad looking to death over a couple days, but the bottom section has been deteriorating much slower. i am really hoping that i can salvage something from this once magnificent cactus. please, does anyone have some advice?

a.f.a.i.k. these are all patterned after commercial faucets, for restaurants, that have a huge flow rate that can blast off anything stuck to a plate. The plate still has to go into a commercial dishwasher after that in any case, for sterilization. So, the faucet that blasts like a fire hose is called a pre-rinse, because the DW is a sterilization-rinse. Make sense? They are still called pre-rinse when they go into residential kitchens although the DW is not a sterilization-rinse chamber, so they only sort of have the same basic function. They don't blast as much either; their flow rate is reduced to residential standards so you don't need to worry about backspray splattering onto everything in sight. If you don't want the coiled spring there are a couple high arc spouts that are made of rubbery material that springs back into place. And, a couple of rubbery material spouts that hold their shape if you move them around.