[Nazasaki]

It is common knowledge that almost all living things have life expectancies. How long do plants in the planted aquarium live? Will a single plant survive a few years? Will the plant eventually "die" of old age in a sense?

With that being said, how old are some of your oldest plants?

Should I expect my anubias to last me 10 years? Or more?? I know my marimos will last because they are often passed down as heirlooms in Asia. Hmmm... little guys may even outlive me if I give them the chance...

 

[bsherwood]

I have 4 year old anubias for sure...maybe older... I tend to keep moving plants. Changing scapes...I have never just let things go for very long...(in long I mean like a year or more)

 

[Nazasaki]

I have never just let things go for very long...

I have that issue as well. I have a bit of OCD when it comes to tanks. My goal is to let my new 20L go and not rip it apart, rescape, etc. Just let my anubias fill in as much as possible and keep a light stock of small schooling species.

When I had my 10 I rescaped a dozen times in a matter of a few months. Got expensive real quick and I gave up on it becasue I just wasn't happy.

Bump:

I have never just let things go for very long...

I have that issue as well. I have a bit of OCD when it comes to tanks. My goal is to let my new 20L go and not rip it apart, rescape, etc. Just let my anubias fill in as much as possible and keep a light stock of small schooling species.

When I had my 10 I rescaped a dozen times in a matter of a few months. Got expensive real quick and I gave up on it becasue I just wasn't happy.

 

[theatermusic87]

well its not unusual for trees to live decades, hundreds and even thousands of years... in nature I've observed plant beds that have died off after a decade or so, and others that are still flourish 2-3 decades later, what the life expectancy is on an individual stem though i wouldn't care to hazard a guess

 

[JJ09]

I tend to think that any plant, if it's not an annual with naturally short life cycle, will live as long as it can ward off disease and predation. My grandmother has a sweedish begonia houseplant that is over thirty years old, I know many people have aloes which are decades old as well. Myself I have pothos that's five years old, an avocado plant that's eight, a crassula (jade plant) that's six, a pepper plant I winter indoors that's going on four... I expect most of my aquarium plants to last as long as nothing in the tank outright kills or eats them. They kind of perpetually regrow their cells, don't they? The only other thing that would end their life in my tank is if one gets too big (aponogenton, crypt wendtii, I'm looking at you!) and I remove it on purpose.

 

[Hoppy]

The only limit I can see on the life of one of our typical plants is mutations that might occur, which might leave new plant segments unable to survive. So, it is possible for a rotala or a val, for example, to live for hundreds of years. Of course the original plant tissue doesn't live that long, but even our bodies get replaced, a few cells at a time, over our lifetime, too.