aquarium plants flower?

[redbelly]

i think one of the plants in my aquarium is about to flower. the leaves grew right out of the water a while ago. serves me right for not doing my research i guess. they are currently pressed right up agains my floresants. then the other day i noticed this stem coming up from between the lights as pictured. next thing you know i cant close the hood without potentialy breaking it. how do i tell my plants they are suposed to stay in the aquarium??

[Anubias]

Hi,

With the smaller swords like the amazon and the black sword, the stalk will generally remain under the surface, and small plantlets will develope at the flowers. It's an easy way to reproduce plants. Here, you have a larger sword. Am I correct?

Regards,

[redbelly]

i thought it was a smaller sword when i bought it. it was labled an amazon, but from its size im not to sure if it is. for the first year and a half of its life it remained submerged but only had minimal lighting. about 4 months after i added another 2 bulbs over the tank the sword went crazy! it doesnt have any leaves under the water anymore. i will post a pic tomorrow and maybe you could help me identify what type of sword it is.

[Tim]

An amazon sword is not a small sword. They grow very large.

[BigDaddy]

It's called an adventurous shoot, and it's how swords principally propogate.

My ruffled sword sent a shoot straight up out of the tank.  I got 4 nodes emerse that flowered regularly.  Waited until I got some decent sized leaves, and now I have bent the shoot back down underneath the water line to try to encourage some good root growth.

[luvfishies]

Isn't it adventitious?

And most swords will outgrow a 75g tank.

[redbelly]

thanks for the input.
I had no idea swords would grow that big!!
i used to have a terrarium on top of my aquarium and was thinking of setting it back up. just wasnt so sure as the plants have been lovin the light of having the bulbs so much closer. this would help acomidate the sword and let it grow as big as it likes and it will look awsome.

[BigDaddy]

Heck... my java fern is practically outgrowing my 75 gallon   :lol:

[redbelly]

it took me a bit but here is a pic of the plant. it has grown quite mangaled as its constantly pushing against the lights.
anyone know what type of sword this would be?

[redbelly]

here is a pic of in the tank, although it pretty much imposible to tell anything about the plant here. it looks identical to the few pieces of val in front of it and none of the leaves are underwater anymore.

[Anubias]

Probably Echinodorus berteroi. If so, you will not get any adventitious plants on the flower stem. I picked one up in Big Als a couple of years ago by accident. E. berteroi is a big plant. I cannot  tell, as I can't easily view the submersed leaves. They should be variable as to size and shape.

Regards,