Wabi Kusa: Wonderful Bunches of Water Weeds
Author: Steve Waldron
To me, the beauty of the modern planted aquarium trend is that it is a new kind of art not yet fully solidified into its final form. I believe we are just at the beginning stages of a planted tank revolution that will take several years to fully mature.
We are witnessing cutting-edge creators blend vivariums, paludariums, terrariums, and aquariums into an astonishingly beautiful horticultural creative practice that can’t quite adequately be described as just aquascaping anymore. The only common denominator is that they are using glass vessels as their blank canvasses.
Their creations feel like a new kind of nature, a novel kind of ecosystem completely controlled and designed by the human intellect and creative process, sheltered in a glass shroud. And though many old-school aquascapers have been at it for decades, this all feels brand new somehow.
Less than a decade ago, carbon dioxide injection rigs, specialized lighting, rimless aquariums, and active planted substrates were on the fringe of the freshwater scene. Now, these are all considered essential tools. I can’t help but wonder what the next big quantum leap will be.
When I think about where I was at with my planted tanks a decade ago and what felt like the cutting edge back then, the first thing that comes to my mind is the humble yet profound wabi-kusa.
Wabi-Kusa
Wabi-kusa are small, weedy balls of aquatic plants growing out of a sphere or puck of a medium like baked clay, or sphagnum moss filled with soil. They are often grown emersed, with the growing medium kept wet enough to hydrate the delicate aquatic plants. Within the confines of a small glass vessel, the wabi-kusa generates its own perfectly suited humid microclimate.
I believe wabi-kusa were the invention of Takashi Amano and his team of creators at Aqua Design Amano. He often used nursery-grown wabi-kusa to seed aquascapes efficiently and quickly.
Amano recognized that the classic method of planting stem by stem in an aquascape was too laborious and time-consuming for the average aquarist and a potential barrier to furthering the hobby. Instead, one could just quickly drop in and arrange an array of balled-up clumps that would then rapidly begin to grow and root.
Amano’s method offered instant gratification. It was a genius idea. The only problem was that the nursery-grown clods of greenery never made it out of Japan due to agricultural restrictions on the soil media the plant pucks were grown on. This left aquascapers around the world enticed, mystified, inspired, and, ultimately, a bit frustrated by their lack of availability.
But, to quote Jeff Goldblum’s character in Jurassic Park, “Life finds a way.” And that is when the era of the DIY wabi-kusa hobby began, evolving way beyond its original intention as just an efficient way to plant an aquascape. Today, creating and growing wabi-kusa is viewed as an art form in and of itself.
Essentially, wabi-kusa are just balls of tiny aquatic weeds. However, when I see one that is well executed, it ignites something in the recesses of my mind, a feeling of nostalgia for the summers of my youth. It calls to mind chasing tadpoles down by the local pond, splashing around with my friends, getting sunburned and muddy, and just enjoying some freedom from all the rules imposed by parents and school.
Breaking the rules with aggregations of greenery is similarly freeing for me—it’s the impulse to create with the mind and hands, or at least to enjoy the work of others who have done so, that makes all types of arts and crafts so rewarding.
There’s something about the simplicity of this process as well. Complicated and expensive CO2 contraptions are not required, as the plants grab all that they require from the air. Aquascaping lights are quite expensive, but a simple desk lamp or window with good exposure works fine for growing wabi-kusa. All that is truly required is a ball of soil, some aquarium plant clippings, and somewhere humid to grow it.
When wabi-kusa entered my world, I had been getting overwhelmed by the expenses adding up from my new aquascaping hobby and trying to navigate the technology and water chemistry requirements of the delicate aquascapes I longed to create. The wabi-kusa removed those worries, and I was able to enjoy what had drawn me to these endeavors in the first place: the deeply satisfying act of creating something beautiful with aquatic plants.
In many ways, the art of wabi-kusa is analogous to that of kusamono, which are tiny pots of accent or companion plants meant to be presented alongside bonsai. They often feature grasses, wildflowers, small ferns, saplings, etc., and are evocative of a meadow, wetland, or forest. Whereas a well-executed bonsai takes an immense amount of skill, time, and technique, a kusamono could literally just be a small shovelful of woodland weeds presented on a clay planter, a simple and complementary art form.
Creating Wabi-Kusa
My favorite technique for creating a wabi-kusa is to wrap a fist-size ball of aquarium plant soil, bind it in fine nylon mesh netting, and secure it with a zip tie. From there, I soak the ball in water, releasing the fine dust particles from the soil, and then wrap a thin layer of aquarium moss as the base layer for the plantings to come.
Java moss is my favorite for this. In humid microclimates, it grows equally well above water as it does below. I will add a few stems of Ludwigia, Hydrocotyle, Rotala, or Hygrophila, and place the wabi-kusa ball in a glass container. I’ll then add enough water to cover two-thirds of the ball and frequently mist it, making sure that the tender plants do not dry out as they transition from their aquatic phase into their tougher terrestrial forms.
After a few weeks, the plants will have rooted and start taking off. From then on, it’s just a matter of trimming and arranging stems to suit your aesthetic tastes. Accents of wood and stone can create a more complicated form, or you can just enjoy the ball in its basic form. Here is a short survey of a few of my favorite stem plants that adapt well to wabi-kusa culture.
Choosing the Plants
The genus Ludwigia offers a lot of creative potential. With their ease of growth, lush foliage ranging in tones of pink, orange, copper, and deep red, these plants are successful in a lot of designs, including wabi-kusa. I’ll often reach for emersed-grown stems of Ludwigia sp. “super red” or L. arcuata when I just need a touch of those red or orange tones to bring in the feel of autumn leaves to my design.
The pennyworts (Hydrocotyle spp.) are found around the world in marshy situations alongside ponds, lakes, and streams, and they bring that authentic wetland vibe to a wabi-kusa design as well. They have nearly perfectly round leaves and remind me of tiny green parasols or verdant toadstools as they wind their way through the design. I’m in love with Hydrocotyle tripartita and its diminutive yet robust and vigorous growth form. H. tripartita lends a fairy quality to every project where it makes an appearance and will often flower in little tufts of white blooms.
Rotala are wonderful and diverse subjects for wabi-kusa culture. In particular, the many color variants of Rotala rotundifolia offer a palette of pastel colors for the designer to draw from. They are extremely easy to grow under emersed conditions, and with strong lighting, they will readily flower in flushes of pinks and purple. Growing aquatic plants for their flowers is one of the great benefits of wabi-kusa culture.
The flowers of Pogostemon erectus are a brilliant purple, growing in a long torch, which offers an impressive touch. Though a little more challenging than the previously mentioned plant species, P. erectus should be on the bucket list of every designer.
I’d like to end this short list of my favorite wabi-kusa plants with an unsung hero of mine: “purple bamboo.” This is a bit of a mystery plant, as its real identity is unknown, though it is in the grass family Poaceae. Purple bamboo grows upright and vertical in delicate whisps of silver-tinged violet, like thin strokes in an ink brush painting, adding a very Zen-like quality.
Natural Beauty
Seeing that purple bamboo emerge from a wild ball of water weeds, along with all the other plants bursting forth in all their verdant splendor, never fails to take me somewhere special. The feeling is like being transported to an imaginary peaceful summer glade, a place where I can soak up all the wild beauty, supported and inspired by the natural world that surrounds me.
Wabi-kusa balls, though simple on the surface, have that deep potential for me, and I hope they help to heal and inspire everyone who has the pleasure of experiencing their tiny wonder firsthand.
