Eriocaulon setaceum

Care at a glance

Overview

One of the harder plants in the catalog, for soft-water high-tech tanks only. It needs very soft, acidic water (hardness of a few degrees at most), strong light, CO2 around 30 mg/l and consistent water column fertilisation over a nutrient-rich acidic substrate. Plant it as a loose midground group where the bottle-brush whorls can be seen against plainer neighbours. It responds poorly to trimming, so rather than topping it repeatedly, replant short cuttings of 5 cm or less and discard tired lower sections. In hard or lean water it stalls and disintegrates rather than limping along.

In the wild

Eriocaulon setaceum grows fully submersed in stagnant and slow-flowing waters across tropical Southeast Asia and northern Australia, typically in shallow, warm, very soft and acidic water. Unlike almost every other pipewort it has no emersed form at all: it lives its whole life underwater and cannot be grown above the surface. It behaves as an annual in seasonal pools, flowering and setting seed before the habitat dries.

Good to know

A member of Eriocaulaceae, the pipewort family, described by Linnaeus. The epithet setaceum means bristle-like and refers to the hair-fine leaves, which reach about 5 cm and sit in dense whorls along an elongated stem. That stem habit makes it an oddity in a genus of squat rosette plants, and its inability to grow emersed sets it apart even further.

Did you know

The whorls of hair-fine leaves make each stem look like an underwater bottle brush, and the plant even flowers without leaving the water, pushing its little button-shaped flower heads up on stalks from the submersed stem.

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