Mosaic Plant

This is a pond plant that people keep trying to grow in aquariums. The species needs strong light at its floating rosettes and often performs better in a suitable sunny outdoor container than beneath a dim aquarium lid. Growing it outdoors over the warm season is sometimes the only way to get satisfying growth. It is rated difficult, and fast when it is happy.

It is not a stem plant in the usual sense. It roots in the substrate and sends stems up to the surface, where each one ends in a flat rosette of diamond-shaped leaves, which is why it is treated as a floating plant. The pattern resembles water caltrop, Trapa natans, although the two are unrelated. Good conditions bring yellow flowers. English-speaking hobbyists call it mosaic plant.

Water: 20 to 30 °C, pH 5 to 8, carbonate hardness 2 to 15 dKH. Keep water at 20–30°C for cultivation. To propagate it, cut off a floating rosette with a short piece of stem attached and leave the parent stem in the tank, where it grows a replacement rosette before long.