Ozelot Sword

Echinodorus 'Ozelot' is a cultivated sword plant rather than a wild species, selected for the dark leopard-spot markings that run across its leaves. Flowgrow keeps a page for this cultivar, but its species description is still a placeholder, so the notes here are drawn from the general facts the page does publish. The plant forms a broad rosette suited to the background, growing quickly and sending up new leaves from a short rhizome.

The culture data list an optimum temperature of 20 to 28 °C with a pH range of 5 to 7, carbonate hardness of 0 to 21 dKH and carbon dioxide levels of 10 to 40 mg/l, with light needs from medium to high. Flowgrow prints no height figure for this cultivar, so the roughly 30 cm reached in the aquarium is a working estimate.

It reproduces by proliferating inflorescences, which bear plantlets on the flower stalk, and by division of the rhizome. With easy demands on water quality it is a forgiving background plant for mixed planted tanks.