Anything in CA?

Dear nonamethefish,

Go to the USDA database web site and choose California.
http://plants.usda.gov/cgi_bin/topics.cgi?earl=checklist.html

You will get 8 volumes of plants in alphabetical order. Go through these lists and pick out the aquatic plants you recognize. I just saw Ammannia latifolia which I have done a lot of research on. See my website at:
http://users.ev1.net/~spituch/a.html

There are a ton of potential aquatic plants out there.

Steve Pituch

The USDA site does give counties in CA where the plants are found. I just looked up Echinodorus berteroi as a scientific name and when I clicked on CA in the map it showed what counties you can find it in.
One of the joys of collecting is discovering the plants yourself. I would find a county that looks good, and then look for typical ditches, marshes where you might find such plants. Your persistence will pay off.

Yesterday, after a year I finally found some berteroi in a ditch here in Corpus Christi. The problem here is finding a ditch that actually has water in it for long periods of time.

Steve Pituch

Here's one of T. Barr's emails describing where he found E. berteroi.

http://fins.actwin.com/aquatic-plants/month.200207/msg00424.html

Regards,
Steve Pituch

Ok, I found something below that gives specific locations for Echinodorus berteroi in CA.
http://www.mip.berkeley.edu:8080/se...inodorus+berteroi&comp_radio=no&compare_to=no

Enjoy,

Steve Pituch

Just call me Steve.

I hope you guys fine some nice stuff out there in CA.

Steve Pituch

Thank you for the compliment.
No, no seeds. For the Brazos Bend biotope I started with small plants in soil in plastic disposable 4 oz cups in the aquarium. Once they started to take I put them in a tank with a soil substrate. I don't think I was dosing much back then. Now I dose my soil substrate tanks along with high light and co2.

I think the key is soil. If you don't have a soil substrate pot the plant in soil. In the wild they grow in extremely stinky muddy gray clay.

I cut the light duration in the present tank from 12 to 10 hours to try to keep the plants from going airborne. I think I will still need to prune a lot of large leaves to keep them under control. I may try to grow one to seed outside. I think if the soil is allowed to dry out a bit they will send up an inflorescence with seeds.

Steve Pituch

Hi Danny,

I think you can put emersed or submerged leafed E. berteroi in a tank with no problem. Well, the problem is that it is very fast growing. Kasselmann says that it will go airborne (even tiny plants) with 12+ hours of light daily. She recommends 10 hours, which is my std regimen. I had shown a picture of one plant that was almost destroyed by snails at:
http://www.aquaticplantcentral.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=9232&highlight=#9232

Only one leaf was left and the stem was halfway cut through. The plant went into shock. However, it slowly started to grow new leaves. The leaves are all small straplike submerged ones. So perhaps this plant needs to be shocked in order to stay submerged for a while. I would keep the light down a bit and prune any leaves getting too big. It is a fun plant to try in the aquarium.

Steve Pituch