Aloe

Aloe vera is a succulent of the genus Aloe, an evergreen perennial whose native home is the Hajar Mountains of north-eastern Oman and the eastern United Arab Emirates; it now grows wild across much of the tropical, subtropical and arid world, and is a common house plant. It has little or no stem and reaches 60 to 100 centimetres, with thick, fleshy green to grey-green leaves edged in small white teeth, and in summer it sends up a spike of drooping, tube-shaped yellow flowers. Its leaves yield two different products: a clear inner gel, put on the skin for burns and other complaints, and a bitter yellow latex, once taken as a purgative. The specific name vera is Latin for true. Aloe is recorded in healing texts from Sumer and Egypt; the Egyptians, who linked it with immortality, used it in embalming, and the Greeks and Romans dressed wounds with it. In the Muslim world a pilgrim back from Mecca might hang an aloe over the door, and in Arabia it was planted at graves, where its Arabic name, saber, means patience. In magic it is a plant of protection and luck: hung above doors and over houses to keep evil out, kept indoors against accidents in the home, and its gel dabbed over the outside doorways to raise a guard around the house.