Izzrd,m I'll keep my eye out for hercules. As you said though, I suppose for now if I want the quick trees I should just go with Goliath and any head that falls I can use for another tree. I'm going to be doing the landscaping at a lot of friends and family houses so the more cuttings and fast growing plants the better. I like my little Aeonium" factories". They just keep popping out heads and the more I just keep propagating into new plants ;-) Amazing garden Hoobv. Wow I'd love one like that some day. I had read that the plicatilis has lots of issues with growth, like they get a lot of black lower leaves and prone to rot. Has this been the case with yours? What area of SoCal are you in? Cactuscharris- for some reason I'm not able to purchase the plicatilis on that site, not sure if it's a gliche or if they're just out of that particular plant!!! Cool I was searching google and there are some variagated forms of the aloe trees!! Very cool.. ...so many succulents, so little time (and money!)

"My instinct is to do this next spring, right when the plants get into active growth mode." I think your instinct is correct. I know that aloes are sending out new roots in the spring as older roots die back just as their haworthia cousins. I have recently been re-potting some aloes and clearly observed this. Although admittedly I am dealing with much smaller hybrids.

Some fantastic shots of various shrubby Aloes. I don't know that I would consider all of them within the "tree aloe" category from a landscape design point of view, but it is an arbitrary division in any case. Are most of these photos from plants at the Huntington or LA County Botanic Gardens? Some truly incredible photos, and few of these would ever be seen in such vigor and size up here, with the exception of the Ruth Bancroft Garden in Walnut Creek and the UC Berkeley Botanic Garden. I still suspect that the cuttings taken back to Texas are mostly likely smaller leaved side shoots from Aloe arborescens, unless your son had access to a collector's garden. A. arborescens is THE most common larger aloe here in the SF Bay Area. While the species grows over much of South Africa and no doubt has wide tolerance for different conditions, I don't think it is likely successful anywhere it regularly drops below 25F each winter for several days, or where the summer nights are hot and steamy and don't cool off. Is anyone here growing this successfully in Texas or south Florida? Also, being a winter bloomer, flowers can freeze even when the foliage resists; and this isn't a particularly attractive foliage aloe to grow for form/texture alone. Of the other Aloes in the photos, the ones I've seen most commonly and/or grown in gardens include speciosa, pluridens, ferox, castanea, africana, arborescens, thraskii, marlothii, x spinossimus to list a few. Here's some photos of them in SF Bay Area gardens: Here is a link that might be useful: Aloes in the East Bay Area

what zone are you in (9a will have very few options, while 9b you may have dozens)? Fastest are Aloe barberae and Aloe Hercules, but most species seem pretty fast to me