The first visit of the year: part 2.

My last post started a quick tour of the main succulent bed in the Princess of Wales glass house at Kew.  The plants are pretty much grouped with agaves down the right hand side and aloes down the left.  Yuccas, cacti and other plants are mixed in throughout the bed. Around this time of year the majority of aloes are coming into flower.  It is a little early for the best display and sadly I think some of the displays are not as good this year.  There are flower spikes everywhere though:

There are some nice aloes in among the plants:

One of the bits they have dug up is now planted with little aloes, including a couple of little aloe plicatilis. I'm not sure how they have kept the leaves so small.

The green aloe on the right is one of my favourites, aloe vanbalenii. I searched for ages to find mine and it is growing nicely, although it's not quite as big as this one yet.

There are a few little aloes just in front of this group, the aloe somaliensis flower is almost open.

Finally aloee vacillans, it was this clump that made me go out and look for mine. Again the flowers this year are disappointing at the moment, but the blue colour is enough to brighten any bed.

Having finished in the succulent area we made the most of having a friend who is training at Kew to get another look behind the scenes. So no surprise what the next post will be about.