Hi, pirate_girl! I'm certain that you know what you are talking about -- you sound like you do, and you did mention that you hang out on the C&S forum, so I have no reasons to doubt your knowledge!. What I was suggesting is to pick a rooting method that will most certainly work on aloes, another method that will absolutely certainly fail on them, and then, say, one more that is in between, that may give mixed results. Cory said that the class project requires an experiment -- so this could be one thing to try. If (or, rather, when :) ) a pup fails in water, that's an experimental result too -- it simply gives extra proof that water is not a right medium here. And if another pup is potted, say, in some gravel (would that be a good medium? Not sure, that's just the one I'd go with, but I grow only a few succulents, so I'm no expert), and not watered till there are roots, and if that pup does well -- then that's evidence that this is a good method. You know what I mean? This experiment would merely produce some more evidence that some rooting methods do indeed work much better than others. Kind of like verifying the knowledge that already exists in the community. That's why I said in my post, "You could ask on cactus & succulent forum, I'm sure they could tell you some good and bad ways to root aloes, and you could then try both the good and the bad methods for your experiments, and see if your results are consistent with what people on C&S forum would predict." But if Cory wants to make sure that no aloe pup is harmed in the conduction of the experiment :) , then this is definitely not the right experiment to try, you are absolutely right! And, well, there are definitely many many interesting experiments to try. I guess what I'm trying to say is, in the timeline of one semester, aloe pups won't do much more than hopefully grow a few roots. So if one is to stick with aloe pups for an experiment like this, it probably would have to be a rooting experiment. That's all. But maybe I'm wrong, like I said, I'm no expert. And there are certainly other awesome plants to use for a project!

After looking over the site you mentioned, the closest type seemed to be the branddraaiensis. Soap Aloe/Zebra Aloe, Prinslooi, Turkanensis, Aloe Zebrina are some of the aloes that have similiar features to the one I have. My aloe has red-orange colored flowers, it splits three ways at the base of the stem, the leaves are a medium green with light slightly oval spots, spikes (which turn from green to brown in direct sunlight, the leaves will also turn a purplish-brown color when over exposed in the light, the center base of the plant never lingers above ground like Soap Aloe does slightly.. the rest you can figure out from the pictures I posted. Unfortunately www.deserttropicals.com doesn't include images with every aloe and the pictures are not very detailed in most cases(ie. baby plants which don't show adult features) Thank you very much for the feedback and link, hope that my main 2 questions will be answered soon :). Brian

When I have pups like yours, with little roots, Ill plant them up in pure pumice first for a few months. Ill keep them shaded and apply water fairly often. Since the water doesnt stay in the medium the roots can grow and the chance of rot is very low. This has worked for me on agaves and aloes.

Thanks everyone for your kind comments and poetic interpretations. I am now envisioning a massive tower of Aloe, tens of feet tall, reaching up towards the life-giving sun. :-) This plant definately ranks as one of my easiest. It gets full sun, all day. It doesn't seem to care much about water either way. Lots or little, it pretty much always looks the same. Other than getting tons of full sun, the other secret to getting such rich color is to keep it rootbound. For the first year or so, it was solid green. Once it filled in the smaller pot though, those gorgeous reds really started coming out. JMSider: I've seen that idea done in a a garden before. They sort of broke off a "corner" of the pot and planted it at a severe tilt. Just like you imagined, the plants (a combo of Aloes and Ice Plants) grew out and sideways before growing vertical. It very much gave the impression of the Aloes spilling out of the pot. Doing the whole scene in miniature is a pretty cool idea though. I just might have to give it a shot!