Blyxa japonica

Care at a glance

Overview

Plant individual rosettes with a few centimetres of spacing in a rich, iron-heavy substrate, since it feeds heavily through the roots as well as the water column. It stays compact and takes on a golden to reddish tint under strong light, and CO2 keeps it dense and prevents the leggy, pale growth you get in low-tech tanks. It suits the mid-ground or the front of a larger scape and will branch from the base into small clumps you can split.

In the wild

Blyxa japonica grows in nutrient-rich shallow pools, swamps, marshes and slow-flowing streams and paddy edges across East, South and Southeast Asia, with a range stretching from India and Nepal east to Japan and south to New Guinea. In the wild it forms low grassy rosettes rooted in soft, mineral-poor substrate. It is a submersed aquatic that stays fully underwater in cultivation.

Good to know

It belongs to the tape-grass family Hydrocharitaceae and was first described in 1866 as Hydrilla japonica by Miquel, then transferred to Blyxa in 1889. Despite Tropica listing it loosely as a stem plant, it is botanically a rosette former that builds a short branching caudex rather than a true internodal stem. The accepted botanical name is Blyxa japonica (Miq.) Maxim. ex Asch. and Gurke, with var. japonica the recognised variety.

Did you know

Blyxa japonica owes its popularity in the hobby to Takashi Amano, who used its flowing grassy rosettes as a signature contrast plant in his Nature Aquarium layouts.

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