# Marsilea



## BruceF (Aug 5, 2011)

A couple of years ago I bought some marsilea in the middle of the winter at a local nursery. I believe it was quadrifolia but what do I know? For a couple of years I grew it in a pot with about 6 inches of water. It grew floating leaves and occasionally some would stand up out of the water. 
During the summer of 2011 I thought most of it had succumbed to the various vagaries of life in the great outdoors, what with cats, raccoons and the occasional fat bird tipping over the pot and a neglectful caretaker displaying no sympathy at all. I did manage to save two small pieces that I brought into the house in the fall and placed in a small aquarium. 
Maybe there were 10 single lobed small leaves in all, no more than inch high at best and those ten leaves just stood around looking mournful and a bit pathetic for all of last winter. Wracked by guilt ( or is it racked) this past October I transplanted the two small rhizomes into another aquarium, where suddenly, this little fern proceeded to send single lobed leaves racing across the substrate. 
So, if you are still with me, what is going on here? I’d like to prevent this plant from growing longer stems and I would also like to keep it growing in this form. Why is it doing this? Is this a submersed form? Is it the light? The temperature? I assume that if it reverts back to the four lobed leaves it will once more start elongating the petiole. Is that true? Is there a shorter four lobed form?


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## asukawashere (Mar 11, 2009)

Most Marsilea tend to look like that in submersed culture. They'll occasionally throw out a split frond or two, but the single leaflet "music notes" are the norm. Floating/emersed leaves are what display the four-leaflet form that inspired the common name.

I do hear occasional accounts of specimens that kept the four-way split even submersed, but there's no apparent rhyme or reason behind it—seems to just be a freak occurrence.


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## jetajockey (Nov 11, 2010)

Agreed, here's a few pics of my emersed marsilea, it grows primarily as singular nubs when fully submersed as asuka has mentioned. This is an outside tank that is on a slant so that the soil stays wet but the standing water is all gathered at a lower point.









And this is in a tub that I bring in and out depending on the weather, some are small and some are the emersed clover form. Sorry for the blurry photo.


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