Creeping jenny Aurea

Care at a glance

Overview

A cool-water stem that suits unheated and temperate tanks better than warm tropical setups; it holds together well up to the mid twenties but flags if kept hot long-term. Give it medium or stronger light and plant it in midground groups, where the gold reads best against green neighbours. CO2 is optional but helps it keep pace. It is a useful nitrate indicator: the golden colour needs measurable nitrate, above roughly 5 mg/l, and fades toward plain green in starved tanks. Propagate by topping or by taking the few side shoots it produces.

In the wild

Aurea is a golden garden cultivar, not a wild plant. Its parent, Lysimachia nummularia, creeps along stream banks, pond margins and damp meadows across Europe and western Asia, and has become established in North America. On land it hugs the ground; the aquarium trade uses the same stock that garden centers sell as a groundcover, and submersed it grows upright instead.

Good to know

A member of Primulaceae, the primrose family. The species name nummularia means coin-like, for the round paired leaves that also earned it the name moneywort. Aurea is a long-established horticultural colour form whose foliage runs light green to gold, and unlike many colour cultivars it keeps that colour underwater, where the plant takes on a fairly vertical, restrained habit rather than growing bushy.

Did you know

It leads a double life: the exact cultivar sold in garden centers as a golden groundcover for pond edges also works submersed, where the flat land creeper straightens up and grows as an upright aquarium stem.

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