Echinodorus Red Wild Grass
Echinodorus 'Red Wild Grass'
One of 21 cultivars of Echinodorus · See all cultivars →
Also known as Red Wild Grass sword
Cultivars · Echinodorus
See all 21 →
Care at a glance
- Light
- Medium light
- CO2
- CO₂ beneficial
- Growth rate
- Medium
- Placement
- Midground
- Type
- Rosette
- Max height
- 9.8 in (25 cm)
- Spread
- 5.9 in (15 cm)
- Nutrient uptake
- Root + water column
- Growth region
- Submersed or emersed
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Origin
- Cultivated variety (no wild range)
- Family
- Alismataceae
Overview
Use it in the midground, where the 15-25 cm tuft gives a fine, meadow-like texture against broad-leaved plants. It is a heavy root feeder, so give it nutrient-rich substrate or root tabs, and an iron-containing fertilizer helps hold the red-brown tone. Medium light is enough; in dimmer tanks the leaves turn plain green, and CO2 is not needed for steady growth. It spreads slowly by side rosettes that can be cut away and replanted.
In the wild
Red Wild Grass is a recent trade cultivar with no wild range. Its genus comes from South American marshes and stream margins, where swords grow emersed on wet mud for part of the year and submersed the rest. Farm stock usually arrives in the coarser emersed form and converts to the softer underwater leaves after planting.
Good to know
It belongs to the family Alismataceae. The cultivar is unusual for a sword: instead of broad blades it forms a dense tuft of narrow, grass-like leaves with a warm red to brown-red tint, and no seller records its parentage. New leaves rise pink from the center of the rosette and age toward green with the warm tint held on top.
Did you know
It is a sword plant doing a grass impression: while most Echinodorus grow broad centerpiece blades, this one forms a narrow-leaved tuft that reads as a red-brown meadow patch in the midground.
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