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Ammania? Alternanthera?

1776 Views 6 Replies 5 Participants Last post by  JennysPlanties, 
F
Hello. I am having a hard time identifying the pink plant in this picture.


When I bought this plant, it was auctioned as Ammania gracilis. But it clearly is not - wrong color, wrong leaf shape.

My guess is that it is either in the Ammania or Alternanthera genus. Does anyone have a clue?

It's a very pretty plant, with the most brilliant hot pink color I've ever seen in anything natural. The leaves are rounded at the end unlike A. gracilis, and the stems are very fleshy and soft (many did not survive shipping) unlike Alternanthera reineckii but similar to Ammania.
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yoink
It looks like Alternanthera reineckii.
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Digsy
Yep, definitely A. reineckii.
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J
Yup, I've got that in my tank. Def. Alt. Reineckii, common name it was sold to me under was "Scarlet Temple".

I had it in my midground but had to move it back; it takes a while to take off (a couple of months w/ high light and CO2 to build a root system) but once it does, it shoots straight up to the top of the tank. Then it will grow smaller plants off of the base of the taller ones that you can clip off and re-plant. It doesn't send off runners though, so if you don't clip the new plants, they will stay in one spot and the bunch just gets fuller looking.

Interestingly, it was the first plant to get get GSA when my tank was breaking in, and it was the first plant to get hit with BBA when my tank started to go south due to a broken CO2 reactor, so you can probably use it to gauge the health of your tank, it seems to be pretty susceptible to algae growth. It also will show signs of stress before other plants (at least any of my others) like holes in the leaves or fading/melting.
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F
really? I've had A. reineckii before and it was very tough all over, woody almost in texture. Plus its leaves were sharply pointed at the end. These are rounded and the leaves/stems are very tender.

It does definitely send out a mess of aerial roots and lateral shoots everywhere. I trimmed it recently and my pressurized CO2 broke down for a couple weeks, so you can't see that right now.
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jaidexl
Definitely A. reineckii or rosaefolia. There are quite a few Alternanthera species, you might have had one of those. IME it's one of the more fragile plants I have, easy to snap. Finicky leaves that can vary in shape depending on growing conditions, mainly spear shaped but can curl and do weird things during deficiencies. Stem thickness and overall mass can vary too within the same species.
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J
Mine is very delicate to, Jaidexl. It gets yanked up if the filter flow is too high, and if I'm too rough replanting I'll lose the bottom inch or so of stem.
Mine definitely has finicky leaves too...

It is such a gorgeous plant though. My favorite in the tank, besides my new rotala sp. pink.
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