A revision of the Aloe tidmarshii/A. ciliaris complex in South Africa

The Aloeaceae, one of the families which comprise the Liliaceae sens. lat., is widely recognized to be one of the most stable of plant families as far as the chromosome complements of its species are concerned (Brandham 1983). Every one of several hundred species has a basic number of x = 7 chromosomes (Riley & Majumdar 1979), and a karyotype that is bimodal, consisting of four long and three short acrocentrics. The karyotype varies only relatively little in size (Brandham 1983) or morphology (Vosa 1982) from species to species. The genus Aloe L. is the largest in the family, and most Aloe species are diploids (2n = 14), with a small number of tetraploids occurring in Kenya, Uganda and Somalia (Brandham 1971; Brandham & Carter 1979, 1982; Cutler et al. 1980; Brandham & Johnson 1982). With one exception, all of the South African aloes of which the chromosomes have been studied are