Java fern babies

ChicoRaton

Se?or Member
Jun 5, 2004
968
0
0
38
Idaho, USA
www.hazy8.com
does anybody have pictures of them? I think mine is growing some, they're little green buds on the leaf with brown roots hanging off
 
I don't have a picture but that sounds right. Mine are growing a lot of new plantlets off the leaves right now.
 
I dont have any pictures either, but thats definitely the way they grow. If you just let them alone, after while you'll have a whole plant growing off the leaf and you can pick it off and replant it somewhere else.
Beats buying them.
 
Yep. Here's a pic of mine...

Java%20baby%20leaf.JPG
 
Beats buyin gthem for sure. I had to keep asking my lfs to order them for a month and a half, then had to pay $8 for a plant with 4 leaves with brown spots and brown edges. I should have just bought a plant on ebay.
 
Well, the picture I included does not show a rhizome. What you are seeing is an old mother leaf giving "birth" to bunches of adventitious plantlets.

But yes, the rhizome that the main leaves grow off of will grow...it will branch out in places and will give way to many, many new leaves. In fact, the rhizome accounts for more new leaves than adventitious ones most of the time.
 
I remember hearing something about mother plants sending out babies if the conditions are not great. That seems opposite to normal though. Is that true? Mine has a small plant growing from it I just noticed today.
 
No, as far as I'm aware, that is not true.

Java fern can reproduce by a growing rhizome which sends up new petioles and leaves and adventitious plantlets that form on the underside of leaves. I have what appear to be small plantlets forming in the hanging root masses of my javas....I read in one place that this could be another (less documented) reproductive strategy, but I'm not sure if they are somehow very minute babies that somehow broke off and got caught in the roots. I kind of doubt that, however.

Perhaps what you are referring to, Captain, is the fact that it is often the older, longer leaves that send out the most adventitious plantlets (at least that is what I have read *shrug*)....and they soon die from "old age"....perhaps making someone think it was the water itself that led to the death of the leaf.
 
AquariaCentral.com