Aloe vera and the identity of the plant carvings in Rosslyn Chapel, Scotland

Summary: The small early fifteenth-century Rosslyn Chapel in the village of Roslin in Scotland is renowned for its extravagant carved masonry and for various myths and tales, including the suggestion that the ancestor of the founder travelled to North America before Columbus, based on the supposed presence of sculptured maize and Aloe vera. Although the identification of the succulent has been questioned before, no objective analysis has been indertaken. This paper presents a comparison of the morphology of the plant with the carvings and concludes that they constitute abstract, possibly botanical, decorative features and are not illustrations of Aloe vera.