Hydrocotyle Japan

Care at a glance

Overview

The easiest plant in this group and a good beginner carpet, though it is a vigorous runner that needs trimming. It carpets well under medium light, and CO2 plus fertilizer make growth faster, more compact and a brighter green. Press the mat down during maintenance to keep it low, since left alone it will pile up and climb. It can be planted in the foreground, attached to wood or rock, or even left to float, but transitioning emersed portions to submersed too quickly can cause some melt.

In the wild

A variant of Hydrocotyle tripartita from Southeast Asia, sold in the hobby as the 'Japan' form. It grows in wet, marshy ground and shallow water, creeping across the substrate and over hardscape with small three-lobed leaves on thin vertical stems.

Good to know

Now placed in the family Araliaceae (the ivy family), having been moved out of the older Apiaceae treatment for Hydrocotyle. The species name tripartita refers to the deeply three-parted leaves. The trade name 'Japan' marks a small-leaved cultivated form rather than a distinct species.

Did you know

Hydrocotyle Japan is one of the few foreground plants that happily climbs hardscape, so aquascapers use it to drape green over wood and rock as well as to carpet the ground.

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