One of the easiest plants to grow in an aquarium is the Java Fern (Microsorum Pteropus). This plant has a thick rhizome that produces light-green to dark-green leaves shaped like elongated spearheads.

The rhizome grows along the surface of whatever the plant becomes rooted to, which can be the gravel, a piece of driftwood, or even a rock, and new leaves arise from the rhizome.

The leaves can be as long as 8 to 9 inches, but in the cool water of a guppies aquarium, they usually grow to only about 4 inches. This plant, therefore, makes a nice foreground decoration. It comes from India, southern China, and the Indo-Malayan area as far as the Philippine Islands, where it is an amphibious species, growing right up out of the water along the trunks of partially submerged fallen trees.