I found this a couple of years ago and it turned out to be the perfect tadpole food. No need to be concerned about rotting food. Its role as tadpole food is its main interest to me. Grows in shallow water with roots loosely entangled in leaf litter. Leaves will often extend slightly above the water line.
mywan, Try googling watercress, especially of the water is flowing. If that's it you can eat it as well. barb
I actually took this out of the wild, but it could be an invasive or otherwise escaped cultivation. If this is watercress it is not at all like the watercress I am familiar with (Nasturtium officinale). I've grown it in waterfall aquariums and eat it quiet a bit. These leaves here are smaller, more uniform, and have perfectly smooth leaf edges and lack veins like a succulent. These also grow in a more uniform matting in shallow water, never extending far out of the water like overcrowded watercress will. Notice that on this plant the leaves are arranged on a stem in alternate pairs, then topped off with a set of three or four leaves. There is no stem branching, unlike watercress. The apparent branching here is actually separate stems from the root system. These are the reasons I question the watercress, but perhaps there are other varieties. Nasturtium microphyllum has similar leaf arrangement but topped with a single leaf, too veiny, large, etc. Rorippa microphylla has similar issues, such as size, structure, and veininess. Perhaps these clues will help with the ID.
Ok thanks Annageckos. A search of that site was fruitful. It appears that perhaps its Bacopa monnieri (smooth water hyssop). Though I need to check more carefully for species this looks very promising.
I keep a few frogs in terrariums but mostly maintain small pools in the edges of the woods for a natural frog breading habitat. $10 kids pools partially buried work well, and I also use some old cast iron bathtubes. The Rana do well in larger ponds, but Hyla mostly depend temporary pools devoid of fish and other predators. My favorite frog Hyla versicolor:
I am thinking this is probably Lemna, it is very common in wetlands. http://keys.lucidcentral.org/keys/a...Pond_Plants/Media/Html/Fact_sheets/lemna.html http://plants.usda.gov/java/profile?symbol=LEMNA
The terminal leaves do have a similar general appearance to Lemna (no shortage of that around here). However, Lemna is a free-floating plant which, though both are technically herbaceous, lacks vegetative stems at all, free-floating root terminates at the leaf. L. trisulca is the only Lemna with branching structures. Though some Lemna can be quiet large, even the largest complete duckweed tends to be about the size of a single leaf on this plant. As I think about it, the only place I've collected it wild is from the slowest moving pockets in creeks, where leaf litter builds up on the bottom. Differences from Lemna, Spirodela, or Landoltia: 1. Six to eight or more sets of alternate leaf pairs arranged along a single soft herbaceous stem beginning at root system and terminating in a set of usually four leaves near the water surface. 2. Root system loosely embedded in leaf litter and silty brown mud at the bottom (easily separated). Note: In the photos I have cleaned the mud and silt from the root system, seen in lower right of pic #1, for inclusion in my indoor tadpole tank. It doesn't grow well cleaned this way but takes a full month or more to actually die. I appreciate the suggestions. Researching the suggestions is educational in itself.
