Amazon Sword on the Surface:

Amazon Sword (Echinodorus grisebachii) is a rooted aquatic plant native to Cuba, Central America, and South America as far south as Brazil and Bolivia, where it grows in the shallow, slow-moving fresh waters of floodplains and marshes. It roots in the substrate and builds a dense rosette of long, lance-shaped leaves that reach well over a foot tall at full size. In the Botanical Method Aquarium, this tint-tolerant plant has a root network that grows extensively, and its leaf mass builds grazing surfaces and refuge across the mid to background of the ecosystem.

Essential Details

• Care Level: Easy
• Growth Habit: Rooted, spreads via runners and division
• Light: Low to Medium
• CO2: Not Necessary
• Propagation: Runners and adventitious plantlets
• Tint Tolerance: Low to Moderate
• Habitat Location: Cuba, Central America, and South America to Brazil and Bolivia
• Optimal For: Betta fish, tetras, and other species suited to background and centerpiece planting in medium to large blackwater and South American biotope aquariums
• Use with Caution: Rinse before introducing; may carry beneficial hitchhiking snails, snail eggs, or duckweed from the grow-out ponds
• Size Range: Documented at 12 to 20 inches at full maturity; young plants ship smaller
• Quantities: Sold as a potted plant

Amazon Sword for Planted Aquariums & Blackwater Biotopes

Amazon Sword roots into the substrate and builds a dense rosette of long, lance-shaped leaves, reaching over a foot tall at full size and anchoring the mid to background of a Botanical Method Aquarium. Its root network draws nutrients directly from the substrate rather than the water column, the same as Dwarf Lily and our Cryptocorynes, and its broad leaf mass creates refuge and a grazing surface for fish and invertebrates.

Because Amazon Sword's leaves grow fully submerged rather than breaching the surface, heavy tint reduces the light reaching them the same way a forest canopy limits light to the plants below it. In a low to medium tinted aquarium, low to medium light is enough to sustain full-size growth. In darker tint, we raise light intensity so we don't release the beneficial concentration of compounds being released by the leaf litter.

Amazon Swords will propagate on their own once established, sending out a runner from the base of the plant, and every few inches, a pup will grow. Each one is a clone of the mother plant and we recommend waiting until a plantlet has grown several leaves and visible roots before separating it from the runner, giving it the best chance to establish. Left in place, a single mature plant can fill a background with several genetically identical offspring over time.

In the wild, Amazon Sword spends most of the year fully submerged and only sends leaves above the waterline during seasonal dry periods, when water levels in its native floodplains drop and expose the plant to open air. We keep ours fully submerged in the aquarium rather than encouraging that emersed growth, since submerged growth is what supports the root and leaf structure our ecosystems and our fish depend on.

Beneath the Leaves: Echinodorus grisebachii in the Wild

Echinodorus grisebachii grows across a wide native range rooting in the shallow, slow-moving fresh waters of floodplains and marshes. For most of the year it grows fully submerged, and only produces aerial leaves and flower stalks when seasonal dry periods drop water levels and expose the plant to open air, a cycle shared with many other plants of the region's flooded forests and seasonal wetlands.

The species carries some taxonomic history worth noting: DNA testing in 2008 folded two long-standing trade names, Echinodorus amazonicus and Echinodorus bleherae, into E. grisebachii, which is part of why Amazon Sword has been sold under several different scientific names over the years without the plant itself changing.

Where a botanical contributes as it breaks down, an aquatic plant is living and contributes as it grows. So let them grow. Mother Nature leads the way.

Sustainability Note:

Please select a heat/cold pack if necessary. Check your local weather before ordering to avoid any shipment holds or cancellations. All Plants may contain snails or snail eggs. We keep them in all of our aquariums for the benefits they provide. Our blackwater aquarium plants are provided in cooperation with PNW Bettas in adherence to their Shipping and DOA Policies. Your curated selection will arrive in their packaging separate from your botanical, wood & merch orders.