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Planting
Days to maturity
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Plant · P-115
Watercress
Nasturtium officinale
Watercress is a fast-growing aquatic green harvested for its peppery, vitamin-rich leaves, best treated as a spring and autumn crop since warm water above about 75 F turns it bitter and slows growth. It roots wherever a stem touches wet ground, which makes it easy to grow in a contained tank or trough but risky to let escape into a creek or pond, where a single broken-off node can start a new colony. Wild or stream-gathered cress should always be cooked, never eaten raw, because water draining from grazing land can carry a liver-fluke parasite that only cooking destroys.
Record at a glance
Growing profile
- Sun
- Full Sun
- USDA zone
- USDA 3–10
- Soil
- Sand · Loam · Clay
- Moisture
- Wet
Vertical layer
Aquatic- Soil pH
- 6–8
- Plant type
- Perennial
- Mature height
- 20 in
- Mature spread
- 3.2 ft
- Plant spacing
- 4 in
- Root type
- Stolon
- Spread pattern
- Both
Keep exploring
Similar plants
Discover more plants with shared forest layers or growing conditions.
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Blue Flag Iris
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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…
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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…
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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,…
Aquatic · USDA 7–10
The deeper layer
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- Primary
- Locked ecological function
- Secondary
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- Byproduct
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Behind the record
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