FAMILY :: LILIACEAE
50 pesos (small division)
ALOE VERA: An indispensable plant for the home first aid kit. While many herbs have dubious applications, this plant is real. For me, it’s main use is in healing any type of burns. There is a clear jell inside the leaves that is very soothing when applied topically.
Easy to grow in semi-shade and in a well drained, warm, dry soil. Loves being a house plant. Loves growing in Vallarta. When it is a few years old, it will send up a spike of yellow flowers, attracting both hummingbirds and bees.
The mother plant, from which all of my other aloes have come, was found growing outside of an old abandoned beach house somewhere up the coast from Vallarta. I don’t remember exactly where. I used to go orchid hunting with friend and we’d take a bus somewhere promising and start wandering. We would find sites that were being bulldozed or destroyed for new housing developments or hotels and spend a day hiking through swamps and jungles or climbing mountains and trees looking for the green gems. We each carried machetes and large plastic cane sugar sacks. If we were lucky we’d come home on the bus looking and smelling like we had been sleeping in the jungle for years, each carrying a full sack of orchids with a machete sticking out the top.
People were not used to seeing gringos who looked like this.