First I would like to give credit where credit is due. The reference section listed here was inadvertently left off of the previous article but also pertains to this one.

REFERENCES

Mr. Karl Schoeler

Mr. Tim Fide

A Fishkeepers Guide to Aquarium Plants, by Barry James, Salamander Books, ©1986.

Encyclopedia of Water Plants, by Jiri Stodola, TFH Publications, ©1967

Water Plants in the Aguarium by Ines Scheurmann, Barron's Educational Series ®1987

Aquarium Plants their identification, cultivation and ecology., by Dr. Karel Rataj and Thomas J. Horemmi, TFH publications, ®1977

   The list could probably be longer but these are the books most often in my hands or the people who have been most giving of information in representing the thoughts, ideas and information found in this and the previous issues article.

   As is shown in the books listed, you can find plants categorized in a number of different ways. Aquatic plants, like the terrestrial plants, fill as many niches in the aquatic ecosystem as their land kin do on land.

   Plants can be categorized as growing in 3 or 4 ways. They are: stem or bunched, rosette or rooted/stand alone, floating and occasionally ferns and mosses. Some of the books categorize plants into as many as 10 different groups by breaking those that I have listed down even further.

   Most Stem or Bunched plants usually grow as a single upright stem or stalk with leaves forming along the entire or nearly the entire stem. The name bunch or bunched plants refers to the way they are commercially sold in bunches of stems.

   The leaves on the stem plants grow in a number of different ways. They are alternate leafing, opposite leafing and whorled leafing pattern.

   The way that the leaves grow on a stem plant is important in attempting to identify them. For example there are at least several hundred different plants that grow with an opposite leafed pattern like the Hygrophila sp. shown in Fig. 1. The opposite leafed growth, as the name implies, is where the leaves of the plant emerge and grow opposite each other on the stem.

   The alternate leafed growth (see Fig. 2) is where a single leaf will emerge from the stem and then a little further up the stem another will emerge, usuauy on the opposite side of the stem from the lower leaf. The leaves will grow in this fashon with a slight rotation around the stem all along its length.

Figure1 -- Hygrophila polysperma -- Opposite leafed


Figure 2 -- Example of Alternate leafed

   The whorled leafing of stem plants is similar to the opposite pattern except that there are at least 3 and many time more, leaves growing out of the same point an the plant stem. (see Figs. 3 and 4). An example of this is Myriophyllum sp. as shown in figure 3.

Figure 3 -- Myriophyllum sp. stem


Figure 4 -- Cross section example of a whorled stem

   The rosette or stand alone type of plant growth is fairly easy to identify. Some of the common plant types for this group include the Cryptocoryne sp. and the Echinodorus sp. also known as Sword plants. The plant growth type is characterized by having the root base and the leaf base meet at the same point. Essentially at the substrate surface. See figure 5.

Figure 5 -- Base of a Rosette growth type

   Floating plants are just that, plants that do not attach their roots to either substrate or any other type of material, such as driftwood. Some of the types that fall into this group are the Duckweeds and Homwort. Some of the floating plants that may also be considered, such as Water sprite and Saivinia sp., may also fall into the last category, that of the fern and moss type plants.

   The ferns and mosses are a bit different as a growth type for an aquatic plant as they are equally suited or at least just as suited for growing on semi-dry land. The ferns, Java fern (Microsorium pteropus, see Fig. 6) and Boblitis heudolotii or African fern in particular, have leaves that grow directly off of the rhizome rather than from the stem. A rhizome is a root like or stem like growth used to store sugars produced by the photosynthetic process. Rhizomes are called storage organs. Storage organs may be bulbs or root tubers (see Figure 6) or even the shoots that are sent out by some plants, like the Amazon sword plants, that new plants grow off of.

Figure 6 -- Java Fern -- Leaves growing from the rhizome

   At times the ferns may be some of the hardest of the plants to identify as being ferns. The ferns are also among the easiest of plants to keep in an aquarium. They are also some of the fastest and the slowest plants to reproduce. Some examples of ferns are Water sprite, Salvinia sp., and of course the previously mentioned Java fern. Some of the mosses include Java Moss (Vesicularia dubyana), and a similar variety called Fontinalis antipyretica. Just a trivial note here that may showjust how diverse the aquatic plant kingdom is; there are about 135 different species of Java moss (Vesicularia sp.) and is more commonly found as an amphibious plant than a submersed aquatic one.