Plate 1 figs. a–e · 2 observations
This species has been photographed under an open licence only 2 times, so some figures below are different views of the same plant, taken on the same day, rather than different individuals. They are usually different parts of it: the leaf, the flower, the bark.
Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.
Native range 1 botanical country
| Region | TDWG code | Continent |
|---|---|---|
| Cape Provinces | CPP | AFRICA |
Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.
Where it actually grows measured, from 79 observations
| Condition | 5th percentile | Median | 95th percentile |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coldest month, mean daily low | 5.0 °C | 6.1 °C | 6.5 °C |
| Warmest month, mean daily high | 28.9 °C | 29.8 °C | 30.1 °C |
| Annual rainfall | 307 mm | 396 mm | 581 mm |
| Rainfall in the driest quarter | 50 mm | 62 mm | 94 mm |
It is barely found anywhere that freezes. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 79 research-grade observations of Gasteria disticha that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.
This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.
Also published as 36 synonyms
A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.
- Aloe angustifolia (Aiton) Salm-Dyck
- Aloe conspurcata Salm-Dyck
- Aloe crassifolia (Salm-Dyck) Schult. & Schult.f.
- Aloe disticha L.
- Aloe lingua var. angustifolia Aiton
- Aloe lingua var. crassifolia Aiton
- Aloe lingua var. latifolia Haw.
- Aloe lingua var. longifolia Haw.
- Aloe linguiformis Mill.
- Aloe longifolia (Haw.) Haw.
- Aloe mollis (Haw.) Schult. & Schult.f.
- Aloe nigricans Haw.
- Aloe nigricans var. crassifolia Salm-Dyck
- Aloe obliqua Jacq.
- Aloe obscura Willd.
- Aloe obtusifolia Salm-Dyck
- Aloe retusifolia Haw. ex Steud.
- Gasteria angustifolia (Aiton) Duval
- Gasteria angustifolia Haw.
- Gasteria conspurcata (Salm-Dyck) Haw.
- Gasteria crassifolia (Salm-Dyck) Haw.
- Gasteria denticulata Haw.
- Gasteria disticha var. angustifolia Baker
- Gasteria disticha var. conspurcata (Salm-Dyck) Baker
and 12 more.
Sourcesevery claim on this page
- World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
- iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
- Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.
We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.