# Plant From 17+ Years Ago - Can Anyone ID It?



## annika (Dec 27, 2008)

Hi, I'm new here. 

About 17 years ago, my husband and I had a 55-gallon aquarium set up with mostly angel fish. We had some kind of floating plant in it. We got the plant from a fish store, although we don't recall now exactly which store we got it at. The plant looked a lot like water sprite/wisteria, but it reproduced by forming tiny baby plants on the ends of the stems. The babies had grew little roots of their own, and would eventually float off and grow into adult plants. It grew rapidly, and required practically no care at all. We'd actually end up discarding some of it, because we had too much.

We'd love to find some more of it, and have consulted both books and local fish stores, but nobody can tell us what it was.

We've got some water sprite in a current tank, and although the leaves look very, very similar, it doesn't seem to reproduce in the same manner. We're raising guppies, and those "mystery" plants would be ideal for the fry to hide in.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance!


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## HeyPK (Jan 23, 2004)

It sounds like it really is water sprite, which does produce small plantlets on its older leaves. Maybe the plant you have now is not water sprite. Can you provide a picture of the plant you have now? The picture, below, shows small floating plants of two varieties of water sprite. The broad leaved variety is not very common now in the hobby.


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## annika (Dec 27, 2008)

Sure! Here's a photo of what we've currently got. The roots on it seem to start midway in the stem, and there aren't any baby plants forming. Maybe it's a different variety?

ETA: We bought these in pots, to be grown underwater. We haven't yet tried floating them.


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## Newt (Apr 1, 2004)

Looks like Water Sprite or a variant there of.


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## HeyPK (Jan 23, 2004)

Yes, it is a variety of water sprite, and yes, it does reproduce new plantlets on older leaves. I have this variety, too. Maybe tank conditions (light level too low?) are reducing the rate of vegetative reproduction in your plants. If you wait you should get little plants on the older leaves, Perhaps breaking off an older leaf and letting it float will increase the rate of reproduction.


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## PLANT^NUT (May 1, 2007)

Yep !! Water sprite. It can be very prolific and hard to get rid of. This is due to its ability to reproduce like a cut up star fish.


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