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Re: Red horemanii (aka roseafolia)



>
>>>In 1990, I am pretty sure I obtained the same plant from Gasser. He gave
>it
>to me as red horemanii. More correctly, I got it from his wife Marge who
>tended after all the Echinodorus.  Bob was in charge of the crypts and
>everything else. Now that Robert H mentioned it, I vaguely remember the
>Gassers using the trade name rosefolia.<<
>
>Thats interesting. I knew someone like you Neil would have more of an inside
>scoop on Gasser! I also discovered I mis-spelled it, it is rosefolia as you
>wrote.

That was not intentional. But for some reason roseafolia seems more
familiar to me.
                                                  ^

Lets remember that plant names get botched in the trade all the time. Good
example is Rotala macrandra which is frequently sold as macranthra. Maybe
its word of mouth.
The best test would be if anyone has a late 1980/early 1990 catalog from
THAT FISH PLACE. It listed all of Gassers plants using his trade names. I
checked the 1978 price list on the crypt pages
http://bastmeijer.myweb.nl/documents/gasser/GasserL1b.gif
but the horemanii were apparently not yet in his stable.
>
>Yeah, your pic pretty much looks like mine, except the leaves on mine are
>more narrow. I wouldn't exactly call it translucent, but definetly a very
>dark red

The leaf width tends to be narrower on younger plants.

>
>What is interesting is that I can get both Gasser's rosefolia and "red
>horemanii" from the same supplier, but the Red horemanii costs quite a bit
>more!
>
And the suppliers that sell rosefolia
>and horemanii also sell uruguayensis. Three different plants, three
>different prices, and each have a distinctive look.

I agree.

 Are they different
>varities or come from different strains? 

dont know the difference.

What would make Gasser's horemanii
>different from any other horemanii? 

it is a different strain/variety :-)

 One grower once told me that there is a
>narrow leaf uruguayensis and a wide leaf uruguayensis variety. Is this true,
>or the imagination of the grower?

narrow leaf is what we generally think of as uruguayensis and wider leaf as
hormanii. The're really different looking and behaving plants despite the
best efforts of our taxonomists to be scientifically correct. 

I have never kept "uruguayensis" (the plant which used to be called and
sold as E.uruguayensis), but recall from Kromholz's experiences that it has
a distinctive floating leaf form.... apparently an adaptation of its long
narrow leaves to submersed growth in shallower water.
 
>
>>Neil, I have more questions!
>
>How would you describe your growth rate with this plant? 


Slow to medium, but not that different from other large, "red" swordplants
(ozelots, indian red, "veronica",aka narrow rubin) Of course many of them
have horemanii as its mother. I have no experiences since 1990 with the
more common Echinodorus varieties for comparison under the same conditions
that I grew the horemanii (with CO2 and more lighting). I seem to remember
that "the" Amazon sword plant (E. bleheri and its smaller cousin) grew much
faster. My experiences would not be typical anyway because of the small
amounts of macros that my plant has received over the years.

>How many months or
>years did it take for it to reach that monster size? Other people are
>telling me it is growing very slowly for them. 

To give you a good answer, I would have to review the dates of slides that
I took over the years. I would say it takes about 1 year to grow from a pup
to mature looking plant, and probably less than 2. I do remember that in
the 125 gallon tank it grew to the monster size in ~1 year.

Would you say the plant grows
>better under lower temps, 
I read in some older aquarium texts (e.g. Muhlberg) that it comes from
southern SA, so I had always kept it in cooler water. (I dont even use a
heaters in this  The lights keep the water warm enough :-). Its water
varied from mid 70's in the winter to low 80's in the summer. This temp
range with 12 hour photoperiod was not sufficient.

>or was that just to get it to flower?
I got the idea of cooler water and short days when I read in Feb 2001 in
Kasselmann that it flowered during the winter in its native location . At
that time, I immediately remembered a confersation with the Gassers who
said it flowered for them during the winter in Stuart FL. After keeping it
at constant 12hour photoperiod for 12 years and not getting it to flower,
but getting to see many generations of the plant develop from vegetative
growth, I decided to put it outdoors....in a 55 gallon tank which was
already sitting on my patio. It was going in a very shady location that
only received morning light, including less than an hour of direct sun. I
would have preferred to make this change in the fall, but was too impatient
to wait another year. I added a heater to maintain the outdoor water temp
to stay over 50degF. I continued CO2 injection to reduce acclimation
problems. Otherwise, the plant got minimal care. Over the next few months,
it lost many of the outer leaves (probably from lack of macros in the water
and nutrient transfer), but it continued to put out new growth. To my
initial dissapointment, nothing happened during late winter and spring.
Then to my delight, I noticed the flower stalks emerge around the summer
soltice. During a 3 week period starting in mid June, it sent up not one
but 3 flower stalks approx 1 week apart. It repeated the event at the end
of August, but by this time the plant was considerably weakened from lack
of TLC over the summer.
Clearly, there were too many changes to the plant to isolate the exact
trigger for flowering (daylength, different quality or intensity of light,
nutrient shock, cooler water, water temp changes, seasonal changes in
daylength, etc. )  It would be nice to try change to a new shorter or
longer photoperiod, but with constant daylength  and also under constant
temperature.
Neil