Egeria Dense - Water Beauty

2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38

Egeria dense is often called Brazilian, dense, and also large-flowered Elodea. In nature, it is found mainly in South America - in Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil. This beauty also took root well in a number of subtropical and moderately warm regions - in North America, Africa, Europe, New Zealand, Australia and Asia. In our latitudes, dense egeria can be used only as a seasonal plant, sending it to winter in aquariums

Getting to know the plant

Egeria dense represents a family called Vodokrasovye. This is a beautiful submerged thermophilic perennial, akin to Canadian Elodea, with a fairly high growth rate - it takes root well and is able to form very solid thickets. The very fragile and branched stems of egeria can easily reach two meters in length. These stems take root in nodes and are equipped with whorls of small leaves.

Bright green and pointed at the ends of the leaves of dense egeria are incredibly beautiful. Their width is only 2 mm, and the length is in the range from 1 to 4 cm. Each whorl, in contrast to the Canadian Elodea, where there are only three leaves in a whorl, contains about four to eight leaves.

At the end of the summer season, dense egeria pleases with its flowering. The white dioecious flowers of this plant are very elegant and noticeable, their diameter ranges from 12 to 25 mm. Three rounded rather wide petals of each flower rise above the water surface. Male flowers are usually larger - their petals are approximately 8-10 mm long. And female flowers are smaller - their petals are only 6 - 7 mm in length.

It is believed that egeria in large quantities secretes substances that inhibit the growth of blue-green algae.

How to grow

Egeria dense develops well both in partial shade and in the bright sun. It is usually planted in the ground in containers, as a rule, at the end of May or at the beginning of June, and the planting depth should be in the range from sixty centimeters to one and a half meters.

Almost any soil will be suitable for the favorable development of beautiful egeria. What's more, it can handle both fairly alkaline and hard water well. However, lime-rich water is best suited for growing it.

Reproduction of this aquatic inhabitant takes place mainly by cuttings. Some parts of plants are also distributed by waterfowl. For vegetative propagation, the stems are cut off an average of twenty centimeters in length. Further, the obtained segments are thrown into the water, five to ten pieces at once, to a depth of sixty to seventy centimeters. Or you can simply fix the segments at the bottom of the reservoirs. In reservoirs with no soil, egeria must be placed in special containers.

From time to time, the spread of the beauty of egeria should be limited. Throughout the season, it is necessary to very carefully remove the excess of this green pet, which can be safely sent to compost or added to feed for pigs or for poultry (dense ducks eat egeria with pleasure). To remove excess, it is permissible to use a rake or a net. And caution is required because the poisonous sap of the plant has a very adverse effect on the fry, and also stops the growth of other aquatic vegetation.

This aquatic beauty is extremely unstable to winter cold. In connection with this feature, a wonderful plant is moved to aquariums for the winter.

Egeria dense is more suitable for medium-sized reservoirs - it looks very cool at their bottom, and in this case it is much easier to limit its distribution. This plant is an excellent oxygenator, rather quickly freeing water from turbidity, actively enriching it with vital oxygen and serving as an excellent shelter for numerous aquatic inhabitants.