Aloe microstigma and offspring

[Tracy]

I have a few Aloe microstigma plants growing in my garden, and ended up with a lot of little volunteers over the last couple of years of flowering.  Since I also have other Aloes in the garden the possibility of some hybrids is also possible.  First photo is one of the older original plants followed by a typical one of the offspring.  Last is an unknown hybrid, which seems to have thicker and wider leaves than the microstigma's but is growing near some other volunteers.  I'm wondering if it could be a hybrid with one of my larger species that flowers at the same time, such as Aloe ferox or Aloe marlothii.

[Tracy]

I have been waiting for the volunteer, suspected hybrid of my Aloe microstigma to bloom since before I took the pictures above in 2022.  In the background, one can see one of the smaller offspring that has always looked like the adult A microstigma.  That little one matured in two years to blooming age, but the one at the base of the Pseudophoenix with the fatter leaves and absent of any of the classic white spots on the leaves is probably closer to 6 years old and finally flowered this year.

I was hoping that the flower would tell me something, but it looks amazingly similar to the original Aloe microstigma's and the seed grown volunteers.  First the suspected hybrid photos.  You can see that the plant shows spotting that looks like either sun damage or water damage, but I have other true Aloe microstigma growing in both more sun, less sun, drier and wetter positions that show none of this spotting.  With more sun and less water they are more red.

[Tracy]

Here are some of the ones that look like my original Aloe microstigma and their flowers.  The inflorescence are a couple of weeks ahead of the other plant, so closer to the end of the bloom, but they all looked quite similar to the other plant when they were in their earlier stages of bloom.  I don't feel any closer to knowing what is going on with the wider leafed plant or it's parents than before it bloomed.

Any thoughts?

[Tracy]

I missed something when I was looking at the inflorescence and flowers initially on the suspected hybrid.  The original plants all have unbranched inflorescense.  Meanwhile this volunteer that was so slow to mature compared to the others has a branched inflorescence which can be seen to split into two relatively low on the stem in the photo below.  Flowers on this specimen seem more yellow and I'm seeing less orange/red color initially.  Will have to continue to monitor the flowers as more open up the inflorescence stem.