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Re: Amazon Sword too big



AliceF8770 wrote:

> In my dirt garden, with hostas or any perennial, I would spade into the soil,
> cut the plant in half, and keep one half planted, move or compost the other
> half - can I work the same way with an amazon sword plant that has gotten too
> big?

If you look closely at the base of the plant you may find that the
leaves emerge from more than one center.  If so then you can use a sharp
knife to separate the centers into separate plants.

I've also found one way that might help control the size of a large
sword plant without splitting the plant.  I had a "mother" sword that
filled a 20-gallon tank.  For I while I thought putting out lots of baby
plants was useful and novel behavior.  Then I had 20 baby plants and
nothing to do with them.  I uprooted the plant and found that it had a
3" rhizome, so I snapped the rhizome off, trimmed off lower leaves and
long roots and replanted the plant.  The plant stopped putting off baby
plants and its leaves stayed a bit smaller than before.

Of course, some types of swords just get big.  If your "amazon sword" is
actually a melon sword (E. osiris) a radicans sword (E. cordifolius), E.
uruguayensis or most any of the other sword plants then it may just be a
big plant.  In that case you can probably just count yourself as a good
aquatic gardener for getting it to its natural size and move the plant
to bigger quarters, like a whiskey barrel.


Roger Miller