Question about Anacharis

[black hills tj]

Okay...so most of you know I recently made the jump to adding live plants to my tank. I love them much more and the fish do as well. i can see my Anacharis branching off the main stem already, and my hornwort is growing like a weed! My amazon sword doesn't seem to be growing as fast, but we'll see how it does.

Now to the question, the anacharis seems to be sending roots down from about halfway up the stems! Why is it doing this? Would it send roots out from the lower point on the stem?

Thanks in advance,

Mike

 

[TTKarl]

Those are what I call "air roots". Most stem plants have them. It should also root at the bottom. You can trim them if you like. I've noticed some are more noticable than others anachris tends to have thick white ones while some plants like ludwigia repens has darker thinner "air roots"

 

[neilanh]

yeah, this is how it propogates. Most people call these lateral shoots.

They're completely ugly, IMO, and weekly I pull them off my plants during my weekly maintenance. But, this is how you would propogate more stems if you wanted them, but cutting the stem just below one of these shoots and planting it.

 

[LandGhoti]

My L. repens and Brazilian pennywort have these lateral shoots.

I would take yours as a good sign your plants are growing! But, as Neilan said, they're completely ugly. But, you know, nature has survived for this long so it must know what it's doing.