Lawn Pennywort

Hydrocotyle sibthorpioides

stem plant midground nano tank foreground Conservation status: LC

Lam.

Other scientific names:Chondrocarpus sibthorpioides, Geophila yunnanensis, Hydrocotyle americana minima, Hydrocotyle americana monticola, Hydrocotyle confusa, Hydrocotyle ecostata

Tiny round leaves like clover on creeping stems that run wherever there is room — over the substrate, up a stone, along a branch. The smallest and quickest of the pennyworts.

Light: high
Difficulty: medium
Temperature: 10 – 30 °C

Plant typestem plant

Growth ratemedium

Carbonate hardness2 – 14 °dKH

Placementmidground, nano tank +1

Propagationrunners, cuttings

Grows emersedyes

Appearance

Rounded leaves the size of a fingernail on thin upright stalks, growing from a stem that creeps along the ground. Rounder and smaller than the leaves of its more common relatives.

Keeping

Moderate demands, and light decides the shape: under strong light it stays low and makes a carpet, in dim light it stretches and trails. Carbon dioxide is not required. It grows fast enough to fill an empty corner in a few weeks, and fast enough to need trimming after.

Placement

The front or middle of the tank, or trailing over wood and stone. Its size suits a nano tank, where a single trimmed patch is a whole foreground.

Propagation

By the creeping stem: cut a piece with a few leaves and its own roots and press it in elsewhere.

Water conditions match

The water suits 1017 of 1249 species in the catalogue — these are the ones people look up most often.

Swordtail Guppies Cobra Guppy Blood Red Molly Butterflyfish Red Zebra Cichlid Julii Corydoras Red-finned Parotocinclus Gastromyzon monticola Egg-shaped Goldfish Flame Tetra Gardner's Killifish African Tetra Kenyi Cichlid Cuckoo Catfish Golden Swordtail Hypsolebias picturatus Common Zacco Labeo Bicolor Gambusia Flying barb Gastromyzon scitulus Albino Zebra Danio Geophagus Brokopondo Zebra Mbuna

Will eat this plant

These species damage plants, especially when their diet is short of vegetable food.

Bengal Loach Zebra Loach Burmese Border Loach Emperor Botia Spined Loach Marbled Headstander Pellegrin's Leporinus Leporinus striatus False Black Tetra Common Metynnis Mylossoma duriventre Red Whiptail Catfish Molly sphenops Balloon Molly Lyretail Molly Marble Molly Hi-Fin Platy Hawaii Platy Blue Platy Pintail Platy Black Platy Chocolate Molly Moonlight Gourami Melanotaenia parva

Will uproot it

These species dig through the substrate and pull rooted plants out.

Marble Loach Peacock Eel Forktail Loach Guntea Loach Long-nosed Loach Horseface Loach Pearlscale Black Moor Goldfish Shubunkin Painted Pleco Featherfin Synodontis Reddish Mystus Catfish Blue Acara Aulonocara maylandi Aulonocara multicolor Aulonocara Orchid Geophagus altifrons Geophagus winemilleri Pearlscale Cichlid Pearl Cichlid Redbelly Cichlid Red-spotted Cichlid Chuco godmanni Haplochromis philander Red Chromide Jack Dempsey cichlid

The same plant with a different look: light, water and care are shared with the species.

Other varieties: Hydrocotyle sibthorpioides Variegata, Hydrocotyle sibthorpioides Variegata in Vitro