Echinodorus floribundus
Also known as Echinodorus muricatus, Echinodorus punctatus, Aquarius floribundus
Care at a glance
- Light
- Medium light
- CO2
- CO₂ beneficial
- Growth rate
- Medium
- Placement
- Background
- Type
- Rosette
- Temperature
- 68–82°F (20–28°C)
- pH
- 5.0–7.0
- Hardness
- 3–15 dGH
- Max height
- 39.4 in (100 cm)
- Spread
- 31.5 in (80 cm)
- Nutrient uptake
- Root feeder
- Growth region
- Submersed or emersed
- Difficulty
- Medium
- Origin
- Southern Mexico and Cuba to northern Argentina
- Family
- Alismataceae
Overview
Be honest with yourself about size before buying: this sword reaches a meter emersed and its rosette spans similar widths, so a closed aquarium only ever holds a young plant. Submersed specimens work for a while as a background solitary in large tanks, fed at the roots with a rich substrate or root tabs under medium or stronger light, but the plant constantly pushes toward the surface. Its best long-term home is an open tank or paludarium where it can rise past the rim, grow emersed and flower. Propagate from plantlets on the flower stalks or by dividing the rhizome, and remove aging submersed leaves before they shade everything beneath them.
In the wild
A large bog plant with a wide range, from southern Mexico and Cuba through Colombia and Venezuela to northern Argentina and Uruguay. It grows in ponds, marshes, floodplains and wet meadows, standing emersed for most of the year with broad long-stalked leaves and tolerating submersion mainly during floods. Fully submersed life is the exception in nature, and the plant behaves accordingly in tanks.
Good to know
A sword plant in the family Alismataceae whose name floribundus means abundantly flowering, which emersed plants live up to. It has circulated in the hobby under the synonyms Echinodorus muricatus and Echinodorus punctatus, and shops still print muricatus; recent revisions of the genus place it in Aquarius as Aquarius floribundus. It is closely allied to Echinodorus grandiflorus and is notably variable across its range.
Did you know
It treats an aquarium as a launch pad. Given an open top it climbs past the rim, switches to firm emersed leaves and produces the tall, freely branching flower stalks that earned it the name floribundus, abundantly flowering.
Appears in
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