''Aloe erinacea'' (locally known as the "Goree") is a rare species of succulent

plant Plants are predominantly photosynthetic eukaryotes of the kingdom Plantae. Historically, the plant kingdom encompassed all living things that were not animals, and included algae and fungi; however, all current definitions of Plantae exclud ...

in the genus ''

Aloe ''Aloe'' (; also written ''Aloë'') is a genus containing over 650 species of flowering succulent plants.WFO (2022): Aloe L. Published on the Internet;http://www.worldfloraonline.org/taxon/wfo-4000001341. Accessed on: 06 Nov 2022 The most wid ...

'', from arid areas of

Namibia Namibia (, ), officially the Republic of Namibia, is a country in Southern Africa. Its western border is the Atlantic Ocean. It shares land borders with Zambia and Angola to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south and ea ...

Distribution

It is

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsew ...

. Its natural

habitat In ecology, the term habitat summarises the array of resources, physical and biotic factors that are present in an area, such as to support the survival and reproduction of a particular species. A species habitat can be seen as the physical ...

s are high mountain slopes in dry

shrubland Shrubland, scrubland, scrub, brush, or bush is a plant community characterized by vegetation dominated by shrubs, often also including grasses, herbs, and geophytes. Shrubland may either occur naturally or be the result of human activity. It m ...

and rocky areas. It naturally occurred over a very wide range, but this area is now highly fragmented due to is

habitat loss Habitat destruction (also termed habitat loss and habitat reduction) is the process by which a natural habitat becomes incapable of supporting its native species. The organisms that previously inhabited the site are displaced or dead, thereby ...

, with different subpopulations being widely separated from each other. The species is also severely threatened by illegal collecting for the plant trade.

Taxonomy

This plant is sometimes classified as a subspecies or variety of the more common '' Aloe melanacantha'', which occurs just to the south of the Namibian border, in the

Namaqualand Namaqualand (khoekhoe: "Nama-kwa" meaning Nama Khoe people's land) is an arid region of Namibia and South Africa, extending along the west coast over and covering a total area of . It is divided by the lower course of the Orange River into ...

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countri ...

. However ''Aloe erinacea'' is also considered by many authorities to be simply a closely related sister species of its more common relative to the south, with the two forming a continuum. Superficially, ''Aloe erinacea'' looks almost identical to ''Aloe melanacantha'', however it is slightly smaller and it sometimes grows into dense clumps due to offsetting. PlantZAfrica.com SANBI - PlantZAfrica.com information page - Aloe melanacantha var. erinacea
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References

erinacea ''Erinacea'' is a small genus of flowering plants in the family Family (from la, familia) is a group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the famil ...

Endemic flora of Namibia Endangered flora of Africa Taxonomy articles created by Polbot {{Asphodelaceae-stub