edgepedia

Wetland flora

35 articles

Aerenchyma

Aerenchyma is plant tissue with enlarged, interconnected gas spaces that transport oxygen to flooded roots. Forms lysigenously, schizogenously, or expansigenously; key to wetland adaptation, crop flooding tolerance, and methane venting.

Alternanthera philoxeroides

Alternanthera philoxeroides, alligator weed or alligatorweed (pig weed), an amphibious Amaranthaceae herb from southern South America; invasive floating-mat aquatic weed in the USA (since 1897), China (since 1892), and Australia, spread by vegetative fragments.

Althaea officinalis

Althaea officinalis, marsh mallow, a Malvaceae perennial of Europe to Siberia and NW Africa whose dried root (Althaeae radix) is an EU-approved traditional demulcent for cough and mild gut discomfort.

Aquatic plant

Aquatic plants (hydrophytes, macrophytes) are plants adapted to water, in emergent, floating-leaved, free-floating, and submerged forms. Derived from terrestrial ancestors, they use bicarbonate-based carbon uptake, provide habitat and water-quality benefits, and are managed as invasive nuisances.

Australasian wetland flora

Australasian wetland flora is the collective vegetation of Australia's and New Zealand's swamps, marshes, bogs, billabongs, and floodplains, from water lilies to floodplain trees such as river red gum.

Betula nigra

Betula nigra, river birch (also red, water, or black birch), a fast-growing deciduous Betulaceae tree of eastern US streambanks and floodplains, with exfoliating bark, spring-fruiting catkins, and bronze birch borer resistance.

British National Vegetation Classification

The British National Vegetation Classification (NVC) is a phytosociological plant community classification for Great Britain, commissioned in 1975 and published 1991–2000 as five volumes of British Plant Communities, with 286 communities from about 35,000 samples.

Cornus sericea

Cornus sericea (redosier dogwood, syn. Cornus stolonifera), a deciduous North American Cornaceae shrub to 4 m of wet soils, hardy to USDA zone 2, with red winter stems, and an emerging invasive in Europe.

Cyperus papyrus

Cyperus papyrus, also called Nile grass, is a tall aquatic sedge native to Africa and northern Israel, best known as the raw material for papyrus paper in ancient Egypt.

Danish Plant Communities

Danish plant communities (plantesamfund), a term coined by Warming in 1895, are recurring species groupings classified nationally via Danveg's 130 communities and legally via CORINE and the EU Habitats Directive.

Drosera anglica

Drosera anglica (English sundew, mikinalo) is a circumboreal carnivorous sundew, an allopolyploid hybrid of D. rotundifolia and D. linearis with 2n = 40, native also to Kauaʻi's montane wetlands.

Drosera capensis

Drosera capensis, the Cape sundew, is a perennial carnivorous plant native to South Africa's Cape Provinces. It traps insects with sticky mucilage tentacles, curls its leaf into an outer stomach, digests prey with enzymes, and self-pollinates readily.

Drosera rotundifolia

Drosera rotundifolia, the round-leaved or common sundew, is a carnivorous Droseraceae perennial of Northern Hemisphere bogs, with sticky round flypaper leaves, 2n=20, studied by Darwin, parent of D. anglica.

Eucalyptus camaldulensis

Eucalyptus camaldulensis, the river red gum or Murray red gum, is an Australian Myrtaceae tree of watercourses and floodplains, the most widely distributed eucalypt with seven subspecies, flood- and groundwater-dependent, and widely planted and invasive abroad.

Filipendula ulmaria

Filipendula ulmaria, known as meadowsweet or queen-of-the-meadow, is a perennial herb of the rose family native to Europe and western Asia, growing in wet meadows, fens, and riverbanks with fragrant white flowers.

Impatiens capensis

Impatiens capensis (orange jewelweed, spotted touch-me-not; synonym I. biflora) is a North American annual wetland herb with orange spurred flowers, explosive 4.2 ms seed pod dehiscence, cleistogamous flowers, and introduced populations in Europe and western North America.

Juncaceae

Juncaceae, the rush family (Juncaceae Juss., 1789), is a Poales family of grass-like herbs with six tepals, six stamens, and loculicidal capsules; about 485 species in seven accepted genera including Juncus and Luzula, sister to Cyperaceae.

Juncus effusus

Juncus effusus, soft rush or common rush, a tufted Juncaceae wetland perennial to 120 cm with leafless stems and side-appearing inflorescences; widespread, weedy in grasslands, used for mats, restoration, and phytoremediation.

List of wetland plants

List of wetland plants: the U.S. National Wetland Plant List (NWPL), successor to the 1976 and 1988 Fish and Wildlife Service hydrophyte lists, assigning OBL, FACW, FAC, FACU, and UPL wetland indicator statuses by region for wetland delineation.

Lythrum salicaria

Lythrum salicaria (purple loosestrife) is a Eurasian wetland perennial, invasive in North America since the early 1800s, tristylous, producing up to 2.5 million seeds per plant and forming dense stands; its ecological impacts are debated.

Mangrove

Mangroves are about 80 species of salt-tolerant trees and shrubs of the tropical and subtropical intertidal zone, forming forests that store over 6.23 gigatonnes of carbon, protect coastlines, and support fisheries; global extent was 147,283.64 km² in 2025.

Melaleuca quinquenervia

Melaleuca quinquenervia (broad-leaved paperbark, punk tree, niaouli) is an Australian Myrtaceae tree yielding niaouli essential oil, and a notorious Everglades invader introduced to Florida from 1886, now controlled by Oxyops vitiosa and Boreioglycaspis melaleucae.

Nyssa sylvatica

Nyssa sylvatica (blackgum, black tupelo, sour gum) is a deciduous Nyssaceae tree native from southern Ontario and the eastern United States to Mexico, 5–30 m tall, dioecious, IUCN Least Concern, with red fall foliage, wildlife fruit, tupelo honey, and tough wood.

Parnassia palustris

Parnassia palustris, marsh grass-of-Parnassus or bog star (梅花草), a circumpolar perennial herb of Celastraceae with white five-petaled flowers and nectar-mimicking staminodes, pollinated deceptively by flies, IUCN least concern.

Phragmites

Phragmites, the common reed genus, includes four clonal wetland grasses; the Eurasian subspecies Phragmites australis australis is a major North American wetland invader, distinguished from native americanus by faster spread, higher biomass, and stronger diversity reduction.

Reed (plant)

Reed (Phragmites australis), common reed, is a cosmopolitan rhizomatous wetland grass with culms 1–4(–6) m. Native lineages and an invasive European haplotype (M) coexist in North America; it tolerates moderate salinity via leaf osmotic adjustment.

Samphire

Samphire, also called Saint Peter's herb, names two unrelated salty coastal plants eaten as vegetables: the marsh glassworts Salicornia and Sarcocornia, and rock samphire of sea cliffs.

Sesuvium

Sesuvium, sea purslane genus of Aizoaceae; succulent C3/C4/CAM herbs of tropical coasts; S. portulacastrum is an edible facultative halophyte used for sand fixation and saline-soil bioremediation.

Spartina patens

Spartina patens, saltmeadow cordgrass or marshhay cordgrass (syn. Sporobolus pumilus), a rhizomatous high-marsh grass from Newfoundland to Texas, tolerant of 0-35 ppt salinity, used for salt hay and restoration, invasive on the Pacific coast.

Suaeda

Suaeda (seepweed, seablite) is a genus of about 94 accepted halophytic herbs and shrubs in Amaranthaceae, subfamily Suaedoideae, published in 1776. It grows in coastal and desert saline soils worldwide, tolerates 200 mM NaCl or more, and is used for food, oil, and saline-land restoration.