Centrolepis Blood Vomit

Care at a glance

Overview

A demanding foreground rosette for a mature high-tech tank. It needs strong light, injected CO2 and soft, low-KH water over a quality aquasoil, and its root system runs longer than the leaves, so give it real substrate depth. Growth is slow and it will not spread by runners; propagate by lifting an overgrown cluster and teasing it apart into separate crowns. Keep it out of the shade of taller plants, and expect the red base colour to sharpen as conditions stabilise.

In the wild

In the wild this is a tiny annual herb of southern Australia, growing on seasonally wet sand flats and winter-wet depressions that dry out in summer. Permanent submersed life is an aquarium invention; hobby plants are kept going year round in soft water over nutrient-rich soil. It forms tight grassy rosettes a few centimetres tall, green above with a deep red base.

Good to know

The plant spent years in the trade mislabelled as an Eriocaulon or Trithuria before being identified around 2019 as Centrolepis drummondiana, a member of Centrolepidaceae, a family of minute cushion herbs that some classifications now fold into Restionaceae. Blood Vomit is not a cultivar name but a direct translation of the plant's Chinese commercial name, describing the red flush at the leaf bases. The epithet drummondiana honours James Drummond, an early botanical collector in Western Australia.

Did you know

The startling name is simply what its Chinese trade name translates to, a blunt description of green blades rising from a blood-red base. Under the name it sold for years, Eriocaulon, it was not even in the right plant family.

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