# Kleiner Bar Sword flower



## jhoetzl (Feb 7, 2005)

Well, I've never seen one before, but one of my kleiners is flowering...

Should I trim it off, leave it be? It isn't particulalarly attractive, but it is a flower...


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## TheOtherGeoff (Feb 11, 2003)

eh let it go for s***s and grins.


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## Daniel*Swords (May 8, 2006)

I think the swords flowers are rather pretty in their simplicity, but that's just me! :hihi: Some of them even have a nice scent! 

You can cut it off after you've had enough of it. If you want to get plantlets grow quicker, keep the flower stalk submersed.


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## Hooligan (May 4, 2004)

Question for you, Daniel...

I've got an Ozelot which went from no flower stalk to one that's out of the water and pushing against the glass top (would probably be 6 inches out if there was no top) in 5 days. In that same time period, my Kleiner Bar has produced a stalk that, as of this morning when I left for work, was within 3 inches of the surface. This is in a fairly deep aquarium (90 gallon), too.

Anyway, I don't find these stalks particularly attractive. Are you saying it's best for the plant to cut them off? Should I cut them as low as possible?

Thanks,
Mark


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## Daniel*Swords (May 8, 2006)

No, I'm not saying to cut the stalks! :eek5: I meant that you can pick out the flowers after they have bloomed by cutting (pinching off) their pedicels.

I can see that people wouldn't find the stalks very attractive...
But they are the fastest way to propagate the swords. I'm sure there would be always people here that would love to buy a plantlet from you!  And yes, the flowering and plantlet growing does tax the mother plant some, but this is all compensated for by the regular ferts.

The fastest way to get baby swords growing on the stalk is to make it stay under water, eg. by tying a thread to a stone and it's other end to the stalk. :red_mouth 

If you don't want to get baby swords, sure you can cut off the stalk, and you're right about trying to cut is as near to its base as possible.


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## Hooligan (May 4, 2004)

Thanks for the advice!

I think I'll try to make some babies. :hihi: The Kleiner in particular is so darn big I'd like to replace it with a small one. Any idea how long it takes for the small plants to form?

Thanks again,
Mark


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## Daniel*Swords (May 8, 2006)

Sure, you're welcome! 

That 'Kleiner Bär' is one of the fastest growing swords I've seen!
They start 'making babies' :hihi: almost immediately if you keep them from flowering (ie. submersed). It takes maybe a month or 1.5 for a plantlet to have grown big enough with roots long enough to be removed from the stalk.

Your 'Kleiner Bär' (= Small Bear) is big? Uh, compared to what? It grows upto max. 1 feet height... usually upto 10''...


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## Hooligan (May 4, 2004)

I'm at work so I can't measure it, but going from memory, I'd say it's at least 10" tall and covers an area about 10-12" in diameter. When I get home I'll see how much I exaggerated!

Mark


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## Daniel*Swords (May 8, 2006)

Well, that sounds about right size  but do send the 'exact' measures when you get to it! 

For me it's a small sword as I compare it to, for example, 'Rosé' that's about 2 feet high and as wide... way too big! and trying to grow even bigger. :icon_mad:


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## Hooligan (May 4, 2004)

OK, I actually underestimated it. The tallest leaf rises about 12 inches above the substrate, and it is angled well off to one side. Pulled upright, it would probably be a good 14+ inches. The plant extends about 14 inches from side to side and 9-10 inches from front to back. The flower stalk has reached the surface, which is 19.5 inches above the substrate.

Mark


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## Daniel*Swords (May 8, 2006)

Well well well. That IS a big plant. So big that I wonder if it really is a 'Kleiner Bär'!! :icon_eek: 

I overestimated my one!  If the mine is anything to go by (and it might not be!)... anyway, the mine is less than 8 '' high, and about the same wide. Granted, it's not in the best place in the tank to grow... Still it's making stalks all the time which is a sign that a swordplant is doing fine. 

Here's Kasselmann's (2001) specs for the 'Kleiner Bär': Height 15-25 cm (6-10''), leaf petiole 5-10 cm (2-4''), leaf blade elliptic, 10-15 cm (4-6'') long, 4-7 cm wide, 3-5 veins.

Can you get us a picture of your plant?


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## jhoetzl (Feb 7, 2005)

*Ein kleine Kleiner Bar (56k warnining!)*



Daniel*Swords said:


> Sure, you're welcome!
> That 'Kleiner Bär' is one of the fastest growing swords I've seen!
> They start 'making babies' :hihi: almost immediately if you keep them from flowering (ie. submersed). It takes maybe a month or 1.5 for a plantlet to have grown big enough with roots long enough to be removed from the stalk.
> 
> Your 'Kleiner Bär' (= Small Bear) is big? Uh, compared to what? It grows upto max. 1 feet height... usually upto 10''...


Daniel - many thanks for the "keeping it submersed" tip! 

Result!
The brown thread is tied to a small piece of slate keeping the top of the stalk down...

































If you look carefully here, towards the left, you can see another small plantlet developing...









Now, how should cut and re-plant these?


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## Daniel*Swords (May 8, 2006)

You're very welcome! I'm glad it worked for you! 
Good looking plantlets you've got there!!! 

Now you just relax and wait till they have put out roots - say about 3-4 maybe 3-4'' long, at least. Just enough roots to keep the anchored when you'll plant them - that's all that's needed. Then you take hold of the plantlet at the crown (where roots and leaves meet) and turn it sideways gently. The plantlet will 'pop' off the stalk. You can do this one plantlet at a time, too! The remaining plantlet(s) will grow the faster the sooner the biggest one is taken off, etc.

When there are no more plantlets coming you just cut the stalk away as near the mother plant as possible. Voilá! :smile:


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## SCMurphy (Oct 21, 2003)

I've had the babies flower while still attached to the stalk, that just doesn't seem right somehow.


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## Daniel*Swords (May 8, 2006)

SCMurphy, you mean the babies grew a flower stalk and bloomed? That sounds weird!!! :eek5: Or do you mean that there were flowers there growing from around the same point as the plantlet? In that case, it's the mother plant. That's quite normal.


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## SCMurphy (Oct 21, 2003)

The baby plants grew flower stalks. I've had the babies grow flower stalks while the motherplant stalk was still attached and while they were floating around in the tank after I had broken them free of the motherplant stalk.


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## Daniel*Swords (May 8, 2006)

Wow! That's news! 
Thanks for the info!!! I just might have to try that on my swords!! :hihi:
Which sword was that?

I suppose here the crucial point is that the plantlets were individuals already living off the ferts in the water column and not suckling them from their momma...

By the way, that is a very viable way of making the whole process faster! When there already are plantlets on the stalk, you can just cut it off from mother plant and let the plantlets grow on the stalk still. (The stalk can be anchored down with a thread for example.) In this way, the mother plant will most probably put out another stalk sooner. The plantlets might grow a little bit slower on their own, though.


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## jhoetzl (Feb 7, 2005)

*End results...*

OK, well, I let them go for another 2 weeks or so, and this is the result...bringing this batch to some folks at NJAS, but next time it happens, they might just wind up as RAOKs...

After breaking them off an trimming the stalk, I would up with three viable plants. And what Mr Murphy was describing had started happening. The smallest of these plantlets had another one coming out from it. I left it floating/mid-watering to see what happens with that one.


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## Daniel*Swords (May 8, 2006)

Hey, wow!  Looking good there! 
So glad it worked for you! 

You wouldn't have a pic of that small one having another baby? I'm curious...


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## turbosaurus (Nov 19, 2005)

Can I hijack for a moment? none of my swords ever throw stalks... I have all different kinds (including a kleiner bar). Some I have had for years and are absolutely HUMONGOUS- but never a stalk... am I doing something wrong? I put in plant tabs ever 4-6 months, add micros and macros to the water column- probably not as often as I should, but when ever I remember- a couple days a week, most tanks have CO2, all have pretty decent light (over 2WPG, even on the 180 gallon) but no stalk and no babies.

They do tend to grow multiple crowns or eyes at the base so if you pull the plant up you can break it apart into 3-4 individual plants. The only other thing I can think of that's relevant is I do keep nitrates rather low (5-10ppm) to keep my red stems popin' - could that have something to do with it?


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## Daniel*Swords (May 8, 2006)

I think you might want to try and give them more root tabs - say once in every 3 weeks - 1 in a month for starters.  That does help mine not to stop growing flower stalks all the time! Quite often I'm sooo tired of them!! :eek5: (Nah, not really :hihi

What's your lighting schedule? Some of them flower only when their day is of a certain length. For ex., _Echinodorus uruguayensis_ (including the red form, aka. _horemanii_ red) seems to require a short day to induce blooming. Others flower only emersed. 'Kleiner Bär' and most of the other hybrids are easy on this... they don't need any special light period.


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## jhoetzl (Feb 7, 2005)

Daniel*Swords said:


> Hey, wow!  Looking good there!
> So glad it worked for you!
> 
> You wouldn't have a pic of that small one having another baby? I'm curious...



It was these that had another stalk coming from them, after I cut it about a week ago, once I saw the roots developing. It is in my tank still, floating with just a few hairline roots and no real leaves to speak of. I am going to see what will happen with it, but I will get a shot of that little one.

As for my parameters - CO2 through the roof - on a controller, keeps the pH around 6.4-6.6. 
Nitrates I haven't measured in a long time (actually, I haven't measured anything in a long time now), but in the 37g these came from, I dose 1/4 tsp 3x a week, and I rotate micros through CSM+B+Fe, Flourish, and TMG 3x a week, 10ml's of each one, once a week. Also dose Fleet (about 10 drops 2-3x a week), and some K2SO4, about 1/8 tsp 3x a week. Root tabs...umm...sometimes, haven't added any in a while now. When I do, I have a bag of the ones from aquariumplants.
Normal 40-50% water changes on Sundays, Saturday is nothing. I start with really soft water (about 1KH), and add 2 Tsp of baking soda, and 1 Tsp of Seachem Equilibrium.
Lighting is a Coralife 2x65w 30" fixture, with an 8000k AGA Bulb (55w) and a 6700k/10000k "Dual Daylight" bulb from Current. The lights are on a slight stagger, about 30 minutes apart, 11 hours a day, with 30 mins on each side of that, so about 10 hours of full intensity. 
Temp is maintained at 76-78.
Oh, and in this tank I do run an airstone 2 hours after lights out, and shuts off 1 hour before lights on. CO2 runs 24x7 via the controller.
Filtration is dual Eheim 2026's - one has the heater and the reactor on the output side, the other has a Coralife Turbotwist UV on it, both run at about "1/2 throttle" most of the time. Sometimes I put one higher just to keep the fsh interested...


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## mrbelvedere (Nov 15, 2005)

Daniel, my Kleiner Bar steadfastedly refuses to flower. What can I do to help it?


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## Daniel*Swords (May 8, 2006)

Here's a poor pic of my 'Kleiner Bär' flower:










The size of the flower's diameter varies from (23-) 28-37 mm. The size of the receptacle (pistils) is small in proportion to the whole, about 3 mm only. The (ca.) 18 sepals crowd the receptacle and are not leaning away from it as in some swords. The penduncle can vary from 6,5 cm upto 9,5 cm at least. The petals are 'frilly' (not entire, ie. smooth) on the edges... and this is not so common in the hybrids that I've seen. And the flower stalks I've seen have been about 70+ cm long with about 4 whorls, first erect but soon leaning.

Another poor pic from a Russian site:










A possibile candidate for the big 'Kleiner Bär' ID _could_ be 'Grosser Bär' (= Big Bear)... coming from the same nursery. This should be around 40 cm tall plant. But, soon we'll have more data on this as I've organised a growing experiment with my and American K-Bar in the same conditions! 

Mr. Belvedere: 
I'm not sure what to say... as I'm pretty sure that most of you guys on this forum do have more light and nutrients in your tanks!  My water is about: pH 7-7,2 KH 4-5 GH 10-11. I give my swords root tabs every 2-4 weeks (I think this might be a key to my success). What I've heard about swords from the experience of a friend is that in very soft waters they don't like to grow or flower (but here we are talking about GH 0-1, yeah, my friend's water is exceptional even for Finland I think... We tend to have rather soft water here). Don't think this was really helpful, sorry...:icon_roll


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## kzr750r1 (Jun 8, 2004)

This flower looks alot like the Red Ozelot flower. The cool thing is the texture almost like lace it's do delecate. It's fun making baby swords eh? My Ozelot took over my tank for a while. Fun while it lasted but needed a change. 

http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/s...ntlets-red-ozelot-sword-trade.html#post124241

Picture one is what I was reffering to by take over. 
http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=2AbsnLhs5YsXUw

Nice color on those babys.


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## Daniel*Swords (May 8, 2006)

All the bigger swordsplants' flowers resemble each other a lot.  Then there's this _grisebachii_-group (with amazonicus, bleheri, parviflorus, grisebachii), then the _subalatus_-group... and the smaller swords - and they have smaller and less showy (if you can call the bigger flower that) flowers, often with petals not overlapping.

kzr750r1:
If you mean the plant in the second pic (with the Pencilfish), then I think you might not have had a red Ozelot. I think that might have been an _Echinodorus schlueteri_, _E. schlueteri_ 'Leopard' or E. 'Ozelot green'. :icon_eek:


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## kzr750r1 (Jun 8, 2004)

Daniel*Swords said:


> All the bigger swordsplants' flowers resemble each other a lot.  Then there's this _grisebachii_-group (with amazonicus, bleheri, parviflorus, grisebachii), then the _subalatus_-group... and the smaller swords - and they have smaller and less showy (if you can call the bigger flower that) flowers, often with petals not overlapping.
> 
> kzr750r1:
> If you mean the plant in the second pic (with the Pencilfish), then I think you might not have had a red Ozelot. I think that might have been an _Echinodorus schlueteri_, _E. schlueteri_ 'Leopard' or E. 'Ozelot green'. :icon_eek:


You’re probably right... I may have mislabeled it. The only red are the spots.


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## jhoetzl (Feb 7, 2005)

jhoetzl said:


> The smallest of these plantlets had another one coming out from it. I left it floating/mid-watering to see what happens with that one.


Well, that was about 20 days ago. That little piece that was left over and left to float about has started developing a few small leaves and some roots.

Here is how it is now:





































I wonder if left floating, will this one will throw off a little plantlet?


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## kzr750r1 (Jun 8, 2004)

jhoetzl said:


> I wonder if left floating, will this one will throw off a little plantlet?


Given time I'd say yes.


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