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Glossostigma and other NZ native aquatic plants...
Hi all,
After seeing a mention here that Glossostigma (as used in Nature
Aquarium World) may actually be a native New Zealand plant, I did
a wee bit of investigating.
Previously unknown to me, it turns out that the patron of our
local aquarium society (who I hadn't met before) is the aquatic
plant guru at the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric
Research (NIWA). I gave him a ring and, yes, Glossostigma is a
NZ native. He gave me the names of a couple of reasonably local
lakes that I'd probably find some in, and I was planning on going
on an expedition one weekend.
This morning I got an email from him saying he was at a river
yesterday that had some cool aquatic plants (including
Glossostigma) and he had collected some for me. His base is just
around the corner from varsity, so I went around after lunch.
He has heaps of troughs with various types of aquatic plants, and
he gave me a few samples to try growing. Among others: a type
of native floating fern - Azolla rubra?; a couple of types of
Charophytes (a type of macroalgae), one of which has what looks
like orange buds); a native Potamogeton; a native species of
Lilaeopsis, L.ruthiana, which has cylindrical, tapering leaves
(looks heaps cooler than the more flattened leaves of
L.novae-zelandiae).
It also turns out that he presented a paper "New Zealand Native
Plants For Use In Aquariums And Ponds" at the recent Aquarama in
Singapore. He's sent me an electronic copy, so if there's
interest, I could whip it into HTML suitable for putting on the
Krib.
I'm also going to send him the info on how to join the mailing
list.
Cheers,
Len.
--
Len Trigg ===================================================
Comp Sci Grad DoD#1334 trigg at cs_waikato.ac.nz
Waikato Uni GPX250 http://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~trigg
GCS d---(+) p c++ !l u+ e++ m* s n@ h--- f* !g w t++ r y+(*)