First - a little story .... back in June of 2011, I gave away many of my little weedy utrics. About a month ago, I was cleaning around my office tank & found a sealed container which originally housed an experiment (I set up 11 small cups with some special aquatic plant media). Some utrics grew in it, some didn't. Somehow the container got pushed behind my tank & out of view. When I found it, I brought it out to toss in the trash -- but before I did, I glanced inside and I thought I saw small specks of green. Sure enough, one pot had something still clinging to life. I located my original 'key' to what species was in each pot. There were many weedy species in the experiment (U. reniformis, U. bisquamata 'Betty's Bay', U. graminifolia, U. uniflora, U. nephrophylla, U. pubescens, U. blanchetii, U. warburgii & U. geminiloba) - ok not all were 'weedy'. When I read the key, I did a double-take. I looked at the green specks & still wasn't sure. So, I opened up the container, took the green specks and planted them in a small pot of mixed, peat-based media.
Here's the pot today - top view:
... and even more amazing, look what's coming up in the side view:
.... several flower stalks.
Yup - out of all those species, who would have figured that U. pubescens, the cutie with the little peltate leaves, would be the one standing 18 months later? I know it's just me, but I really enjoy seeing the variety of weedy mosses among all those miniature umbrellas popping up everywhere - like a pretend, mini-jungle ...