One of the most interesting floating plants is the Eichornia crassipes water hyacinth, also known as a thick-tailed pontoon.It owes its name to the characteristically distended petioles.These regular, spherical structures keep plants afloat. The leaf blades themselves are not much larger than the petioles, also round in outline.
The vegetative parts of the hyacinth are original and very decorative, but the flower clusters of several dozen lilac-blue flowers are the greatest ornament of plants.Unfortunately, plants are definitely thermophilic and bloom only when when the water temperature exceeds 24 ° C for a long time, and sunlight for 12 hours a day.
Thanks to these flowers, the hyacinth spread throughout the tropical world, where it spread like a weed, making it difficult, for example, to navigate in rivers and ponds.Despite the wide use (fodder, compost, raw material for making baskets, etc.), huge amounts of money are spent on fighting it, and trade in plants is forbidden in many countries.
In temperate countries such hyacinth habits are not a threat. Although plants develop equally intensively in summer, the cold is an effective obstacle to further development.Storing plants is difficult and rarely successful, which is why hyacinths are grown primarily as annuals.They are propagated by dividing the plants, and the separated fragments are simply left on the surface of the water.
