"Dave M. Picklyk" wrote:

My ludwigia, hygrophila, and rotala have done amazingly well with leaving
the bottom stem and re-planting the clippings. If you throw the bottom away
then you are starting from fresh with a rootless stem. By prunning, the
original plant starts to grow shoots of leaves along the lower parts of the
stem instead of strictly on the crown...thus making the plant more bushier.

or did I read you right ?

It is all a matter of personal preference, tasnk growth rate and individual
plant species. My bright red rotala macrandra can grow more than a half inch per
day, so my strategy there has been to replant the tops of half of the plants
every week, tossing the bottoms. This gives me a continuous range of heights in
the tank, plus big buckets of cuttings for sale. Keep in mind that when removing
the bottoms, there are often side shoots that can be replanted or sold. Also,
this plant tends to branch out when it hits the surface, so one stem becomes 3
or more at that point.

Bushier has never been a virtue in my tank.Overgrowth has caused me more
problems, from underestimating how much plant matter was in the tank and
underfertislizing as a result. See the recent thread "Clues that a major pruning
may be in order" on March 10.