Americanized Giant Salvinia Gardens for Research, Not Ornamentation

Summary: Americanized giant salvinia gardens may admit giant salvinia's nine relatives but must be confined to aquaria and water features without outlets.

Fast-growing giant salvinia fern quickly clogs lakes and ponds: Scott Bauer/USDA ARS (Agricultural Research Service), Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Americanized giant salvinia gardens accede to environmental concerns regarding water quality and species diversity when the floating water fern members of the Salviniaceae family are in aquaria, confined ponds or contained pools.

Alabama, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Nevada, North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina, Texas and Vermont state and United States federal legislations ban giant salvinia. Federal- and state-enacted weed sanctions consider the perennial herb's claiming direct sunlight, dissolved nutrients and dissolved oxygen, clogging waterways and waterway-related machinery and crippling water flow. Florida, North Carolina and Texas likewise decry as weedy relatives Mexican and Central and South American round-leaved salvinia, or water spangles, and South American eared watermoss.

Federal legislation in the United States and state legislation in Alabama, California, Massachusetts, Oregon, South Carolina and Vermont extend weed designations and sanctions to round-leaved salvinia.

The aquatic ornamental native to Argentina and Brazil furnishes neither seeds nor seedlings since germinated spores, lateral root buds and stem fragments function as reproduction modes.

The 11.81-inch- (30-centimeter-) long aquatic weed grows in slow or still waters whose temperatures go between 68 and 86 degrees Fahrenheit (20 and 30 degrees Celsius). Giant salvinia, called kariba weed commonly and Salvinia molesta (Salvini's irksome [plant]) scientifically, has brown-edged, center-folded, light green fronds and an elongated, horizontal, stem-like, underwater rhizome. A range of water temperatures between 26.6 and 109.4 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 3 and 43 degrees Celsius) induces the rhizome's lateral root buds to initiate reproduction.

Doubling biomass every 10 days, and size every two to four days, joins Americanized giant salvinia gardens into mats at 50 degrees Fahrenheit (10 degrees Celsius).

Giant salvinia knows whorled arrangements that keep two round to oblong leaves, each 0.19 to 2.36 inches (5 to 60 millimeters) across, floating opposite one another.

Biology lavishes upper foliar surfaces with orderly rows of water repellent hairs and foliar tips with four fused water repellent branches in Americanized giant salvinia gardens. It manages a third branched, brown, feathery, root-like, submerged, 9.84-inch- (25-centimeter-) long leaf in the whorled giant salvinia described by Dr. David S. Mitchell in 1972. Richard Dickinson, in Weeds of North America, University of Chicago publication from 2014, notes stalks under 0.04 inches (1 millimeter) long on submerged filaments' main axes."

Giant salvinia stalks offer egg-shaped sporocarps, each 0.08 to 0.12 inches (2 to 3 millimeters) across, during the growing season's frost-free dates from April through October.

Giant salvinia sporocarps produce fruiting bodies called spores whose germination and viability prove to be scientific unknowns since sporangial sacs generally provide empty or infertile contents.

Weighty releases from chain-like clusters of spore-producing sporocarps qualify as giant salvinia modes of reproduction secondary to stem fragmentation but competitive with lateral root bud production. All three propagation means require research since eared watermoss, giant salvinia and water spangles represent just three of the genus Salvinia's 10 temperate and tropical species. Cold hardiness to and heat tolerances of air and water temperatures serve as research-worthy topics of interest since chilly and sultry weather patterns stress giant salvinia.

Americanized giant salvinia gardens tolerate, wherever possession turns out to be legal, the 10 troublesome Salvinia species in the self-contained confines of aquaria, ponds and pools.

Giant salvinia completely covers Lake Wilson (Wahiawa Reservoir; Kaukonahua), Honolulu County, central Oahu: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Digital Visual Library, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

Fast-growing giant salvinia fern quickly clogs lakes and ponds: Scott Bauer/USDA ARS (Agricultural Research Service), Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Giant_salvinia.jpg

Giant salvinia completely covers Lake Wilson (Wahiawa Reservoir); February 2003: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Digital Visual Library, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Salvinia_molesta_covering_lake.jpg

For further information:

Dickinson, Richard; and Royer, France. 2014. Weeds of North America. Chicago IL; London, England: The University of Chicago Press.

Mitchell, D.S. (David Searle). 1972. "The Kariba Weed: Salvinia molesta." British Fern Gazette 10(5): 251-252.
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/39338278

"Salvinia molesta D.S. Mitch." Tropicos® > Name Search.
Available @ http://www.tropicos.org/Name/26604303