Family Name: Ricciaceae

About This Plant

Riccia fluitans is a small aquatic liverwort. it has been known in the aquarium hobby for a long time, but was made popular for aquascaping use by Takashi Amano in the early 1990’s. He took a last that we mostly thought of as a floating plant, tied it to rocks and used it as a ground cover. While it is stunning used in this way, people should be aware of its tendency to float away before too long. Over time, Amano San and others found that it could be kept in place longer by mixing it in with other, rooted ground covers, such as Glossostigma . Even so the fact that the pieces that float away easily become a nuisance has led to it being less popular than it once was as a ground cover. Interestingly, while Riccia is mostly a floating plant in nature also, it can also be found both attached to rocks, as in the photo above right, or mixed in plant “communities” in shallow water, just as we use it in the aquarium.!