{"id":9207,"date":"2020-11-10T03:38:24","date_gmt":"2020-11-10T03:38:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gardenescapades.com\/blog\/?p=9207"},"modified":"2020-11-10T03:38:24","modified_gmt":"2020-11-10T03:38:24","slug":"plant-a-day-2020-day-290-lemna-species","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gardenescapades.com\/blog\/2020\/11\/10\/plant-a-day-2020-day-290-lemna-species\/","title":{"rendered":"Plant-A-Day 2020 (Day 290) Lemna species"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

What an unusual and fun plant is duckweed.\u00a0 We found out from a friend that koi love to eat it, so we drove to local ponds and harvested some to feed them.\u00a0 They ate a LOT! We had to make a couple of trips a month in the warmest weather. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was able to winter some duckweed over in the greenhouse last year in a dormant state and the plants leafed out in a bucket in the spring and then provided all the duckweed the koi could ever want through the summer.\u00a0 This plant is very prolific!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The lifecycle of this plant is fascinating. They have tiny flowers that humans rarely see, but that are visited by flies, mites, small spiders, and even bees. But they can also be pollinated just by bumping into each other on a windy day. Duckweed\u2019s most common propagation technique is to form new chains of plants-and they are so prolific that scientists are find ways to use them to remediate polluted bodies of water and also to grow medicines, like synthetic insulin. And they can also produce \u201cturions\u201d\u2013special buds that drop to the pond\u2019s bottom, overwinter there, and then float back to the top and leaf out into duckweed plants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n