Common water hyacinth - Eichornia crassipes

Common Name :	Common water hyacinth.
Botanical Name :	Eichornia crassipes
Family :	Pontederiaceae
Bengali Name :	Kochuri-pana.
Photo Taken :	Bangladesh

Common water hyacinth flower is one of my favorite flowers. This plant can be unwanted and exasperating to people, but when the flower blooms, it just looks spectacular. This water plant is from the family Pontederiaceae and the botanical name is Eichornia crassipes. This plant is mainly native to Amazon basin, but later spread to the other part of the world.

Common water hyacinth (Eichornia crassipes) was originally from South America, more specifically from Brazil. But later on it just dispersed everywhere somehow. This is a water plant and only grows in water. The root of the plant is black in color, almost looks like beard. This plant has spongy and bulbous stalk that keeps them afloat over the water. No matter what the water level rises it would keep floating. This is a perennial plant having noticeably large glossy leafs.





The flower of Common water hyacinth (Eichornia crassipes) is extraordinarily beautiful. This inflorescence flower has six to seven flowers on a single axis, and each flower has six petals and the color of the five petals are from lavender to pink or light blue. Other petal is interestingly different. This one is darker in color, and yellow spot at the middle. It looked to me a plumage of a peacock just painted on that petal. Flower has 3 visible stamens and three smaller stamens inside. It has stigma and ovary too, but I have never seen any seeds of this plant.





Though the Common water hyacinth flower has sumptuous outlook, but this is one of the worst water plants ever. This is a very fast growing plant and can occupy a pond or lake within few weeks easily. Later on it becomes impossible to restrain the growth of this water plant. People from around the world are using tons of money for just controlling this invasive water weed. In Bangladesh, we always use to face difficulties with this plant. For example, during the flood, this plant uses to enter inside our paddy fields, but after the flood those remain inside the paddy field to make the life miserable for farmers.





In spite of its noxious attitude, this plant has some benefactors. In Bangladesh, we use to make compost fertilizer using this plant. Since this is widely available inside our water tanks, we can use those easily. Also some crops requires moister at soil. Using this plant around root of the plant we can easily achieve this. We are also using this as fuel at villages during cooking. Some people use to plant this weed at garden for its attractive flowers.

I haven't seen the seed, but it uses to produce capsule like seeds. Seeds can remain dormant for proper environment for up to 20 years. This plant mainly uses to propagate through the stolons. It just create a mat over the water surface and make almost impossible to navigate any water vehicles through these.

Common water hyacinth has taken over the river Narsunda.

Common water hyacinth has taken over the river Old Brahmaputra river.

Photos of Common water hyacinth (Eichornia crassipes) were captured from different locations of Bangladesh. In Bangla this plant is known as Kochuripana (কচুরিপানা), and the flowwer is known as Kochuripana ful (কচুরিপানা ফুল).


This article has written by Lonely Traveler,
for the blog http://icflora.blogspot.com/