A water lily question......

[Mmathis]

No idea where it came from, but I just found a teeny, tiny little water lily plant mixed in with some of my plants. It ended up in a 50 gal. tub that's holding my baby GF. The only lilies I have NOW are hardy lilies, but year before last I had a tropical lily that made babies [out the wazoo!!]. This looks just like one of those tropical babies. My only guess is that it came in with some new plants [or it somehow survived from 2 years ago.....]

What do I need to do to grow it out! Any lily instructions I've ever seen were for full grown plants, not an off-shoot this small.

Background info: my pond is "down" right now, and all of my plants are temporarily either in individual tubs, in the stock tank with the fish, or in a kiddie pool.

 

[dieselplower]

It has been growing with no assistance so you could continue to leave it alone or just plant the tuber in some gravel.

 

[Mmathis]

It has been growing with no assistance so you could continue to leave it alone or just plant the tuber in some gravel.

But how deep would you suggest? It's just so teensy....
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Oh, and BTW, if this IS an off-shoot of the tropical lily [Islamorada] I had a few years ago [though I don't see how, and why it's just now starting to show up......], it was a beautiful purply color -- and VERY prolific [viviparous]! LOL, I may have babies to ship out to good homes in the future! Literally, almost every leaf that the lily put out made a baby lily plant -- but I don't recall that the leaves were that pretty mottled color.... Time will tell what it turns out to be.

This is what the Islamorada flower looks like.
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[minnowman]

Plant it so the growing tip is just above the level of the dirt.

 

[Mmathis]

Plant it so the growing tip is just above the level of the dirt.

Thanks, minnowman!

It's so teensy, I'm afraid it will get lost! Where in the water, like depth, should I place it? Does it need its own little water environment to grow in for a while, until it gets bigger?

 

[dieselplower]

I dont think there is an exact science to it. I would put it about 6" under the water if you can, and then when the pads reach the top, lower it again. And repeat....

 

[minnowman]

If you think your fish will dig it up just put it in a pot in a bucket of water until it's bigger. it should grow very fast once it has more nutrients.

 

[Mmathis]

Gonna pot it tonight and see what I end up with! Will keep y'all posted....

 

[Mmathis]

@minnowman & @dieselplower, and anyone else interested:

The little plantlet has been planted for a week now. Well, sort of. I have it's container suspended into a container of water [have a regular water lily in there, waiting to go back into the pond] where there is just about 1/2" of water over it. After about 3 days, I found it no longer stuck in the soil, but floating in its container. So since that's how I found it originally, I let it stay that way -- floating in that same 1/2" water, where it is just above and touching the soil. It's close enough to the soil that I figured the roots would find the soil eventually. It hasn't grown or shown any physical change.

It had occurred to me that it was something else like Frogbit, instead of a water lily. But I looked up images of both, and it does look more lily-ish.

 

[fishin4cars]

On small ones like that I don't even plant them. I take a plastic cup and fill it half full of sand and what ever other planting media I'm going to use, then place a rock on the roots just to hold it in place and give the roots a media to grab a hold to. Tricky part is keeping the cup in water so that it is fully submergered , yet still keeping it close enough to the surface for the plant to get light and grow.

 

[dieselplower]

That's interesting. I didnt know you could "tag" people on this site. Cool feature.

 

[Mmathis]

That's interesting. I didnt know you could "tag" people on this site. Cool feature.

Yeah, I posted to Becky a couple weeks ago to see if there was a way to send a public PM [so to speak]. The "@username" was the solution -- neat, huh?

You know, sometimes you have a question or comment that you want to direct to a certain member, but at the same time, you want it to be public so other members can benefit and/or chime into the conversation.

 

[Mmathis]

On small ones like that I don't even plant them. I take a plastic cup and fill it half full of sand and what ever other planting media I'm going to use, then place a rock on the roots just to hold it in place and give the roots a media to grab a hold to. Tricky part is keeping the cup in water so that it is fully submergered , yet still keeping it close enough to the surface for the plant to get light and grow.

That's kinda what has ended up, but I left it floating -- I didn't think about the rock. This guy is so tiny, so I'll have to find a small rock that won't crunch it, LOL! Thanks!

 

[fishin4cars]

Just a small rock that will hold the longest grown tip of the root down. For that size lily a flat rock say the size of your finger print? lol Not big at all. I usually pick up something just laying around. I've got a baby I started about three weeks ago that was about the same size. Now it's got a new pot about 1 gallon and I just fertilized it this past week. It looks like it may be a night bloomer but all the leaves are red. We'll see in about 3-4 weeks what the flower will be.

 

[fishin4cars]

@Mmathis, Cool! Thanks for sharing! I didn't know we could tag!