Aloe peglerae Schönland

Selmar Schonland

Professor Selmar Schonland , the founder of the Botany Department at Rhodes University, was a German immigrant, who came to the Eastern Cape in 1889 to take up an appointment as curator of the Albany Museum...

 ("Fez aloe") is a small, stemless South African aloe

Aloe

Aloe , also Aloë, is a genus containing about 500 species of flowering succulent plants. The most common and well known of these is Aloe vera, or "true aloe"....

 300-400 mm in diameter, and 300-400 mm in height. The glaucous leaves are strongly incurved to form a compact, spherical rosette. Inflorescence can be observed in July and August, and usually consists of a single cylindrical spike 300-400 mm tall, occasionally forked. The visible portions of filaments are deep purple in colour.

This species occurs along the northern dip slopes of the Magaliesberg

Magaliesberg

The Magaliesberg is a mountain range extending from Pretoria in the north of the Gauteng Province to a point south of Pilanesberg, in the North West Province, South Africa...

 and the Witwatersberg, the range just south and parallel to it. The species is named after Alice Marguerite Pegler

Alice Pegler

Alice Marguerite Pegler , was a South African teacher and botanical collector.The daughter of S. Mackin Pegler, Alice was educated at the Dominican Convent in King William's Town. Although trained as a teacher, she abandoned this career and settled at Kentani where she raised and educated her nieces...

 (1861-1929), a botanist and naturalist who collected at first around Kentani, and later in the vicinity of Johannesburg

Johannesburg

Johannesburg also known as Jozi, Jo'burg or Egoli, is the largest city in South Africa, by population. Johannesburg is the provincial capital of Gauteng, the wealthiest province in South Africa, having the largest economy of any metropolitan region in Sub-Saharan Africa...

 and Rustenburg. Her failing eyesight and health led her to confine her attention to algae

Algae

Algae are a large and diverse group of simple, typically autotrophic organisms, ranging from unicellular to multicellular forms, such as the giant kelps that grow to 65 meters in length. They are photosynthetic like plants, and "simple" because their tissues are not organized into the many...

 and fungi. She was paid the exceptional honour of being made a member of the Linnaean Society.

This species forms natural hybrids with Aloe marlothii Berger and with Aloe davyana Schönland

Selmar Schonland

Professor Selmar Schonland , the founder of the Botany Department at Rhodes University, was a German immigrant, who came to the Eastern Cape in 1889 to take up an appointment as curator of the Albany Museum...

.