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Re: Flowering echinodorus



"Roger S. Miller" <rgrmill at rt66_com> wrote:
  
<snip>
>I'd love to hear other people's experiences with propogating the largers
>sword plants.  Hopefully someone else will chime in.  Up to now I'm a
>little surprised by what appears to be a lack of experience among the
>list members.

OK, Roger, since you asked ...

I had a large ozelot sword in my garden pond last summer. It produced three
or four flower stalks with dozens of white flowers. I didn't consider trying 
the seeds, as you did, but collected about two dozen plantlets. The first few 
where grown in the pond itself, using clay-rich garden soil in standard plastic
pots, to a reasonable size, and traded at the LFS at fall time when I shut 
down the pond. I tryied to keep the smaller plantlets indoors for the winter, 
and planted then in a mix of kitty litter and the same clay soil plus a little 
peat. I used as pots the bottom half of gallon milk jugs. I kept then at first
submersed under about 1" of water. After a couple months, since they were 
growing _so_ slowly, I moved then to emersed growth in the same pots. All the 
time the pots were kept inside a sterilite clear plastic tote box covered with 
plexiglass and directly under two cool white bulbs. Occasionaly I spray the
box insides with water with some drops of Miracle Gro. The setup is a wonderful 
BGA grower, but the plantlets, so far, are still plantlets. I put also other 
plants in this box: java fern, java moss, penyworth, anubias nana, and all 
did grow to some extent.

Maybe I got the plantlets from the mother plant too early, or, maybe the whole 
setup was too cold for their liking. The temperature inside the box was 
around 60 degrees for most of the winter. They didn't lose their leaves, so
I believe they still have growth potential. As the pond now is getting warmer,
I'll eventually move them back to there and see what happens. I'll post the
development of this when the time comes.

- Ivo Busko
  Baltimore, MD