If you want a water garden or
pond that will need minimum maintenance, you need lots of aquatic plants. Artificial
ponds need lots of plantings in order to establish balance in the eco-system,
so water can be filtered by plants and kept clean.
Water soldier grows very fast
and will be very useful for forming dense mat of floating vegetation that will
fill the pond. This interesting plant resembling aloe plant is floating in the
water and sinking to the bottom for the winter. Sometimes it gets attached to
the bottom with the long roots – which are reported growing even 5 m long.
It origins from Europe and
Asia, but in some countries like Canada it’s on the list of invasive plant, as
it spreads very fast in natural waters.
You can recognize water
soldier by sharp edges similar to aloe plant. Plant submerged in water or sinks below the surface
as the leaves growing up to 40 cm mature.
It flowers with 3 white petal flowers, then developing around 20 seeds.
Water soldier is easy to grow
and doesn’t have special requirements, when you bring it home, you just ‘toss’
it to the pond. Bigger plants will need some help, as they will be out of
balance probably until next season. Water soldiers propagate by
offsets which look like smaller version of the adult plants.
This is very informative, Ewa. I would like to put water soldiers on my pond. It looks so natural. Thanks for sharing! :-)
ReplyDeleteIv got a water soldier that produced and want to keep off spring will I damage it if I separate from mother plant by releasing from main plant
ReplyDeleteHow to separate water soldier from mother plant without killing it
ReplyDeleteHey Gareth, I don't have that experience with the soldier, because my grass carps ripped them off in less than one hour after bringing them to the pond :(
ReplyDelete