Gasteria flowers

One of the most important features of distinghuishing a  Gasteria are the flowers (but certainly not the only one).

This page attempts to show a picture for each species of the 'normal' flower as far as that is possible. The pictures also try to be to scale, in other words, smaller flowers will be relative smaller than bigger ones as I photograph them with a cm measure next to them. 

Colour is important too:  species like glauca, ellephiae, nitida are bright red, while most bicolor and excelsa are a pale pink. The end of the tube may be striped green or have a yellow or red colour.
However, colour is highly influenced by the amount of light they receive. Plants grown in poor light conditions will have pale flowers. In these pics they appear as they grow in my greenhouse. 
The typical flower colour is discussed on each species page.

Flower length is measured without the petiole .  Length can differ between clones by as much as 25%.

Most Gasteria flowers are divided in two clear parts:

• the gasteriform part, the 'belly'

• the tube

The relative length belly <> tube is important, so is the shape of the belly and of tube.