Salvinia cucullata

Care at a glance

Overview

An easy, very fast floater for tanks without strong surface agitation. Under ordinary light the leaves lie flat and it reads like a small salvinia; the hooded look only develops with plenty of light, warmth and nutrient-rich water, so treat the hoods as a condition report. It pulls everything from the water column, which makes it a useful nitrate sponge and cover for fry and shrimp, but it will also shade rooted plants below, so thin the mat by the handful every week or two. Keep the surface calm and the lid drip-free, since constant droplets sitting on the hairy leaves encourage rot.

In the wild

A free-floating fern of still and slow-moving waters across South and Southeast Asia, drifting in ponds, rice paddies, ditches and wetland margins. Like all salvinias it has no true roots: each node carries a pair of floating leaves and a finely divided submerged leaf that hangs down and does the root's job of taking up nutrients. It never grows rooted or terrestrial, its whole life happens at the surface.

Good to know

A floating fern in Salviniaceae, named from the Latin cucullus, a hood, for what its leaves do under strong light and rich nutrients: instead of lying flat they fold upward into little rolled hoods. The upper leaf surfaces are densely set with water-repellent hairs that give the plant a velvety look and keep it dry in rain and splash. Being a fern it reproduces by spores in nature, but in practice it spreads by fragmenting and budding off daughter plants.

Did you know

The hoods that give this fern its name are optional. The same plant grows flat, open leaves in lean conditions and rolls them into upright hoods when light and nutrients are generous, so its shape tells you how well it is being fed.

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