[Robert Hudson]

I was always told this plant is not cultivated commercially, but all the plants sold commercially have been wild collected and exported from west Africa. So are these variations cultivated or in the wild? I thought the difference in color and size were simply do to growing conditions and those that are collected, wild, emersed grown. A large amount of Anubias and Bolbitis come into this country thru big trans shippers who import fish and plants from west Africa.

I'll give an example: I planted Bolbitis that had a very thick rhizome with two very dark green leaves that were about 15" tall. Over the course of a year it grew out to be a bushy plant with leaves light green in color and about 6" tall maximum. The rhizome grew out smaller pieces that were quite skinny. The large leaves eventually died off. The plant came from an African importer. My water is soft, 7.2 ph, low light, strong current with a power head. I have since chopped up the plant and sold it all.

 

[Robert Hudson]

I know that Oriental and FAN do not grow it.

I was going to say that, but I didn't know if anyone would believe me! FAN imports a lot of plants, but before they sell it they try to increase what they imported by two or three fold by growing it out and propagating. Some plants take too long for them to do that. To what extent they do that with Bolbitis I do not know. They only have the plant periodically, not throughout the whole year. I wonder if Tropica cultivates it? So the plant definetly does not have intentional, induced variants by nurserys, right? Different variants of Java fern come from different parts of Asia. Does B. heudelotii grow anywhere off the continent of Africa? Any African islands? I thought it was restricted solely to west Africa.

On the other hand, a very large amount of Bobitus that is circulating thru the hobby are plants grown by aquarists that have keep the plant for years, even decades. For example, large bags of it are typically seen at RAS and probably other aquarium society auctions.

Yeah, Tom Barr used to give away bag fulls. They were pretty large.