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Echinodorus "Rose"




Folks,

I finally acted on a plan to set up a large Echinodorus in a very small
tank, with the plant growing emersed.  This is to adorn my office.  My
original idea was to grow something like a rubin sword out of a 2 1/2
gallon hex tank.  I balked at the cost of the hex tank and instead bought
an equivalent-sized glass, vase-like "fish bowl".

Also instead of a rubin sword the LFS was selling something they called
Echinodorus "Rose".  The plant had the look of the large emergent
Echinodorus like E. cordifolius and E. osiris.  And it wasn't at all
"Rose"y, but that's another matter.

When I indicated (with my right hand, for those trying to visualize) that
I intended to plant the "Rose" in the fish bowl tucked under my left arm,
the sales clerk told me that the nursery representative said that "Rose"
couldn't be grown emersed.

I was a little taken aback by that, as it appeared to me that the plant I
selected *had* been grown emersed.  Two new leaves on the plant were
distinctly lighter-colored and thinner than the older leaves and I assumed
those were recent submersed growth.  But the salesman insisted that the
nursery was having a winter special on submersed-grown sword plants, and
this was part of the purchase.  "Hmmm", said I.

The sales clerk also couldn't tell me what species an E. "Rose" was, and
he did let drop that all the E. "Rose" he had seen before were pretty
rosey, and these weren't.  That leaves open the possibility that the plant
wasn't E. "Rose" at all.

So the question is, what in tarnation is E. "Rose" and will it grow
emersed?  This last part of the question I may have an answer to pretty
soon, because it's sitting on my dining table now, in a peat-soil-gravel
substrate under three inches of water, with it's leaves standing pretty as
you please out of the water and above the rim of the fish bowl.  If anyone
else has had something sold as E. "Rose" grow above the water (or not) and
can tell me what it's supposed to look like and how it fared then I'd
appreciate hearing about it.


Roger Miller