Anubias coffeefolia

Care at a glance

Overview

Tie or glue the rhizome to wood or rock and never bury it, since a buried rhizome rots. It thrives in low light with no CO2, drawing nutrients through both leaves and roots, so a little water-column liquid fertilizer is plenty. Growth is very slow, which means leaves can collect algae over time, so place it where there is gentle flow and keep light modest. The compact size suits the midground or foreground attached to a stone.

In the wild

A cultivated variety of Anubias barteri, whose wild parent grows along rivers and streams in tropical West Africa, attached to rocks and submerged wood. Like the parent it is an amphibious plant that grows both submersed and emersed, rooting into hardscape rather than the substrate.

Good to know

Belongs to the arum family (Araceae) and is a selected cultivar of Anubias barteri, not a wild-collected variety. New leaves emerge a coppery bronze and harden to dark green, and the leaf surface is distinctly bullate (puckered between the veins), which is the trait the cultivar was named and selected for.

Did you know

Did you know the bronze-to-green color shift on coffeefolia happens because young leaves lack mature chlorophyll, so the leaf almost glows reddish-brown for a week or two before darkening, giving an established clump a constantly changing two-tone look.

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