I have had this plant for approx 2 years.

It puts out a new leaf every week but has never grown any bigger.

Its is in a high light, co2 injected, tank that has probably been lacking in ferts but having said that all my other Echinodorus in the tank are happy, fast growing and reproducing.

It has small green leaves with red speckles.

The first pic is of the plant in question and the second pic is of the same plant beside a recently acquired E. Leopard for comparison.

Echinodorus leopard. It is a hybrid with E. horizontalis and another sword I have forgotten the name of. It is like horizontalis, stays small and produces few pups (maybe a couple on a runner). Seems to have dropped off the price lists in many places because it is not as commercial as some others. Ozelot is a hybrid with leopard and something else. Will respond to good light, CO2 and ferts. I have it emersed but still not very productive.

Awwww... it's so compact - I want one!

My E leopard looks like the other one you have.

So, you going to clone it and rename it as E leopard 'kiwi' or 'petite' and sell it

Contact the SPCA and make this person feed their pets. Light, CO2 and Ferts

Alan , I am in the process of switching my fertilizer regime to the same regime that Jen uses. This will no doubt take a few weeks to fine tune but I am willing to bet that the new regime will only alter the growth rate of the plant and perhaps the colour of the leaves. not the size of the leaf and stalk or the compact ,rosette nature of the plant

If it does I bags the first pup. They do need a lot of light submersed and the emersed shape is even bigger than that by the looks.

light shouldn't be an issue, it's almost directly under a 250w, 14000K MH lamp.

I'm considering taking some rhizome cuttings, any tips?

Yes. Don't.

It is always risky, works with some plants but have never tried it with leopard.

Have you had runners off it?

When you hybridze these plants you cross pollinate the flowers and grow the seeds. You will get a great variation in the plants that grow so you pick the ones you want. I crossed leopard and ozelot but could not get the seeds to grow so gave some to someone more skilled at it. Some of the resultant plants were coming along nicely when a heater failed and cooked them. It is possible that this plant is from another cross, in which case you could have a nice new plant but unfortunatly it would be of no value if it does not wish to propagate. Tried Barry White?

Risky in what way? killing the parent plant?

I have had no runners as yet but I am ever hopeful. perhaps the Leonard Cohen isn't doing the trick

A couple of others have suggested that it looks a bit like parvoflourus x leopard

It is used commonly to propagate uraguayensis but they need to be pretty mature plants with a well developed rhyzome -usually a few years old. Sometimes you can lose one or both plants and other times you can stimulate them to develop a lot of small plants.Risky when you only have the one. It has the growth characteristics of parviflorus. That would be an interesting hybrid to develop.

It is a very attractive plant KP. I hope you can convince it to propagate naturally (or with the assistance of Barry White).

If it does, keep me in mind :lol:

Alan doesn't need any more swords, the number he has is already unnatural! :lol: :lol: Although, if you don't have any luck propagating it, I don't know anybody better able to do it for you.

Since I posted here, my one and only emersed leopard has produced four runners, each with 2-3 pups. They seem to sit and do nothing or go nuts. Emersed leopard would be one of the more difficult swords to convert to submersed which would be one of the reasons there are not many about.

Has there been any change to the plant in question since increasing the ferts?

Jennifer had a few submersed leopards that were developing pups at a rate of knots but I haven't been able to get a sneaky look of late.

Converting it to emersed would be an option but it generally takes a long time to get the plant back up to a happy state.

It's still growing well. It puts out 2-3 new leaves a week which is more than the leopard beside it.

The leaves are a little bigger than before but still nowhere near as big as its neighbour.

No pups yet but its early days.

Come on KP! No pressure. 8)

Alan, I have 7 leopard runners and each one has at least 2 pups, some have three. Some pups are so big they are now planted (and getting eaten by the plec/GBA :an!gry ). Horizontalis has a runner now too!

How tall do the leopards get? May require some

Around 10-15cm diameter and 10cm tall. Way nicer than those monster evil things. :lol:

Emersed leopard

The smaller runners are from a parviflorus hidden behind the leopard, but there are four good runners there.

I took the plunge and seperated a couple of the larger rhyzomes from my clump of leopards and so far so good, small plantlets developing on each segment, all going to plan i should have a few available in a month or so if anyone wants one.