[HeyPK]

Kasselmann says that she has cultivated Nymphoides sp. Taiwan for several years, but has not been able to get the plant to develop any flowers, which are needed for identification. I have what looks like flower buds developing on one of the little plantlets that grow on the petioles of the leaves. Has anyone else been able to get flowers?

 

[tsunami]

I've grown this plant before for a little while. I got it from someone in SFBAAPS.

Although the plant never flowered, it produced many, many new plantlets. Also, it had a tendency to produce floating leaves. The plant was too large for the aquarium I had at the time, so I gave it away.

Carlos

 

[Cavan Allen]

Floating leaves? As in different from the submerged ones? A lot of the leaves on mine reached the surface, but did not change form. I'm not aware of that ever happening with this plant.

 

[tsunami]

Floating leaves as in leaves that float on the water's surface.

They weren't any different from the submerged leaves.

Carlos

 

[Cavan Allen]

Ok. I thought you meant like in Nymphaea lotus.

One leaf on the stuff I had made it to the surface and had a section dry out. When I replanted it, a bunch of new plantlets formed on the inside of the dried out hole. Neat stuff.

 

[HeyPK]

Nymphoides seems quite sensitive to nutrient levels. When nutrients get a bit low, it starts making leaves without the little bump from which the plantlet will grow near the blade . Refresh nutrients, and the next leaf will have the little bump. I got the little flower buds when I boosted nitrogen, phosphorus, and iron. Now I have to rip out a whole tank full of Myriophyllum mattogrosense which is overwhelming everything to get the Nymphoides back under ideal conditions.
This is my first experience with M. mattogrosense. I had no idea that it was such a rapid grower or such a take-over plant. Every branch produces numerous side branches, and they all grow horizontally and smother everything else. Also, the branches that are covered over with other branches don't stop, and soon you have an impenetrable mass. This Myriophyllum may get banished to a gallon jar on the windowsill, where it can join Potamogeton perfoliatus, Zosterella dubia and other plants that can take over a 20 gallon in one week.