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Planting
Days to maturity
Seasonal yields
Sow indoors · Direct sow · Transplant outdoors
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Mosquito Fern
Azolla filiculoides
Water Fern is a tiny free-floating fern that carries its own built-in nitrogen fixer, a cyanobacterium living in a pocket inside every leaf, so it needs no soil partner to make nitrogen-rich biomass. The mat can double in as little as three days, and farmers in southern China and northern Vietnam have grown it as a living fertilizer ahead of rice for centuries. Dried or fresh, it also makes a high-protein feed for poultry, pigs, ducks and some fish, though the safe share of the ration varies by animal. The catch is that it soaks up heavy metals and other pollutants from the water it grows in just as readily as nutrients, so a pond used to clean dirty water should never supply feed - that has to come from a separate, clean pond.
Record at a glance
Growing profile
- Sun
- Full Sun · Partial Sun
- USDA zone
- USDA 7–10
- Soil
- Sand · Loam · Clay
- Moisture
- Wet
Vertical layer
Aquatic- Soil pH
- 6–7.5
- Plant type
- Perennial
- Mature height
- 1–4 in
- Mature spread
- 12–36 in
- Plant spacing
- Not yet recorded
- Root type
- Fibrous-shallow
- Spread pattern
- Root
Keep exploring
Similar plants
Discover more plants with shared forest layers or growing conditions.
American Lotus
Nelumbo lutea
American lotus yields three separate harvests from one plant: a rhizome that bakes sweet and mealy like sweet potato and stores for months…
Aquatic · USDA 4–10
Blue Flag Iris
Iris versicolor
Blue Flag Iris is a rhizomatous perennial of marshes, pond margins and wet meadows, grown for its blue to violet flowers from May into August…
Aquatic · USDA 3–9
Bulrush
Schoenoplectus acutus
Bulrush is a tall wetland sedge that forms dense rhizome colonies along pond margins, lake edges and slow streams, growing several feet tall…
Aquatic · USDA 3–10
Cattail
Typha latifolia
Cattail is a tall wetland perennial that colonizes the shallow margins of ponds, ditches and marshes, forming dense stands of sword-like…
Aquatic · USDA 3–10
Giant Swamp Taro
Cyrtosperma merkusii
Giant Swamp Taro produces an enormous starchy corm - up to a meter long and 80 kg - grown by holding it in permanently flooded pits in…
Aquatic · USDA 10–12
Lotus
Nelumbo nucifera
Sacred lotus grows from a rhizome buried in pond mud, sending up round leaves well above the waterline and flowers that open for only a few…
Aquatic · USDA 4–10
The deeper layer
Plan what comes next.
- Primary
- Locked ecological function
- Secondary
- Locked ecological function
- Byproduct
- Locked ecological function
Behind the record
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