Water-rooting Water Spinach

Rooting water spinach (Ipomoea aquatica, 空心菜 in Chinese) in water is like fate as meant to be.  Just 24 hours, it had shot out 1cm white sliky new roots from the nodes.  I was thinking it might actually grow in water as in its native environment, and as described on Wikipedia:

I. aquatica grows in water or on moist soil.

The following photo was taken after 48 hours in water.

Water-rooted water spinaches after 48 hours

You can see a number of new roots, a few is as long as 2cm.

Water-rooted water spinaches after 72 hours

Water spinach's Chinese name is 空心菜, which is a fitting name since its literal translation is hollow (空) hearted (心) vegetable (菜), you can see the water spinach has a hollow stem in the photo above.  心 also figuratively means center or focus of something.  菜 isn't used alone, it could be 蔬菜 (vegetable) or 青菜 (green vegetable), the latter often means the green leafy vegetable.

I transplanted one in soil, the other in a fish bowl, which already had one pothos growing.  Not sure if the water spinach could cope with low light, the photo on the right was moved for taking a photo.

Originally, I was thinking to use tap water, but it seems more sensible to be with fishes, so it could get a little bit of nutrient, although I don't know how well or long fish poop can be taken by the plants.

I used a 600ml bottle to hold the cuttings, the leaves were stripped from nodes in water.  Two nodes of leaves were removed and roots came from both nodes as you could see in the photo above.

Leaves stripped from nodes

Rooting water spinaches in water

Submerged in the water, the bottom of stem was cut at an angle, but I now don't believe it's necessary.  The water was changed every day.  Also, I didn't bother to strip leaves above water line to reduce transpiration and evaporation from leaves, guess I was just lucky.

It probably would do pretty well if I were to directly to them root in moist soil, but I wanted to see root growing.

I must admit that I had a prejudice against water spinach despite it has the word 'water' in its common name.  As I staring at the hollow stem, I didn't believe it would root, but I was completely wrong about it, it was the most easily water rooted plants I have ever tried, and you could eat it.