Lace Plant

The most common way to kill a Madagascar Lace Plant is to assume it has already died. This species runs an annual cycle: after a period of active leaf production the bulb drops everything and rests bare for weeks or months. Bulbs get thrown out at exactly this point every year by keepers who read dormancy as rot.

What makes it worth the trouble is the leaf structure. The blade develops as an open lattice of veins with no tissue between them, so a mature leaf is a green skeleton up to 40 cm long. The effect is unlike anything else in cultivation, and it is thought to reduce damage in the fast, clear, nutrient-poor streams in Madagascar where the plant grows wild.

It is demanding, and the demands are specific rather than merely fussy. It wants soft acidic water at pH 5 to 7, stable temperatures of 20 to 27 °C, and a mature tank whose parameters do not swing. Warmth at the top of that band is what tends to trigger dormancy. Light should be moderate rather than intense, since strong light on slow-growing lace leaves invites algae that is impossible to clean off a perforated blade. Consistent CO2 helps.

Seat the bulb on the substrate surface or barely into it, never buried. Propagation is by division of the rhizome, or from seed if the plant flowers.