Help identify these plants found in a wetland and some nearby farmlands in Palapye, Botswana. They seem to be water loving plants 'cos they are growing right inside the water and on the sides. However, they are not common as natives couldn't name them.
The first looks like an oenethera of some sort. Leaves on the species are somewhat variable, but it is an emersed aquatic plant. Some are shrub like and the height of a man, and some are low growing. The flowers and the leaf shape and the stems look like Oenethera genus to me. The second plant could be something like Typha spp, or cattail. Hard to say. Also emersed aquatic. The leaf arrangement doesn't look like any of the more wetlands iris type plants.
Thanks for this lead in identifying these plants Thanrose. I did some search on Botswana flora based on your suggestions and found some useful information. A bit of confusion still as one source visited suggested that the one you thought might be Typha spp, or cattail, could be Hypoxis hemerocallidea (African star grass). As more suggestions come in, we will be able to narrow it down. Thanks a great deal for the contribution. Fakinyem
Excellent! The photos I see online of Hypoxis hemerocallidea show the leaf arrangement in your photo. Even though Typha spp. grow pretty much around the globe in temperate to tropical areas, your pic's leaf arrangement was a little too precise for Typha as I know them. Were we like Victorian naturalists and just rip things out of the ground or shoot them out of the air, we'd know for near certainty by the root descriptions of your H. hemerocallidea. The evening primrose, one of the common names for the Oenethera spp., is native to North America, but is so common in such a variety of species that a collector of fish or aquatic plants could very easily spread it elsewhere. If I can go out to local Florida lakes and find African cichlid fish, I think it's possible for you to find species not indigenous to your area, too. Maybe not in more remote areas, but certainly in significant centers of population. Of course, it's even more likely that it is just a similar looking plant to something I know, and maybe something that is just infrequent in your area. If you have any specialists in man made ponds, or aquaria, or exotic plants, you might ask them. Better pics of the flowers and stems, leaf arrangement, any seed pods, etc. would help them.
This is further confirmation for the plant in the 2nd image that its actually Hypoxis hemerocallidea. Thanks for checking the images online. The first image, I noted down as Oenethera spp (evening primrose) which I have now confirmed from several online sources that a variety of these are present in Botswana.
