Solving the Problem of Duckweed
The primary problem with duckweed is the waxy outer coating which enables it to float and by floating as a mass block sunlight from reaching the bottom of your pond. No sunlight, no photosynthesis, no growth below, so it kills what is below it. It also reduces the oxygen in the water aiding the anaerobic decomposition of the dying biomass and other muck on the bottom. This is what causes the bad smells. These type of bacteria also release phosphates from the dying biomass, which helps the duckweed grow even faster!
That waxy coating inhibits a lot of herbicides from being effective requiring multiple applications and long term concentrations in the water to be effective. If the wax can be removed to give a pathway for the herbicides to enter the plant, even simple herbicides like liquid copper (EarthTec®) can work because they are effective
once they get into the interior of the leaf and to the chlorophyll. However this was a problem in the past due to the reasons stated above-ie
getting the herbicide through the waxy coating (which can grow back almost as fast as you remove it) and into the plant itself.
Problem Solved! Introducing
eLemna-8, an invention by fishery biologist Kevin Hutchinson and chemical engineer George Hutchinson of
South Santee Aquaculture and
AlgaeControl.US.
eLemna-8
An environmentally friendly blend of natural dewaxing agents,
cereal based microsponge sticking agents, emulsifiers, muck
degrading enzymes and tracer dye. Accelerates the natural
bacterial decomposition of aquatic plants and algae.
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| Lemna minor or "Duckweed" |
Shakespeare referred to "duckweed" as "Green mantle of the standing pool." Duckweeds (otherwise known as
Lemna minor) are plants that are well-known to everybody, and consequently very few persons know anything of them. This is a paradox; but they are so common and so small that the average man or woman is content to know them in the aggregate, and cannot condescend to a more intimate acquaintance with individuals, or with the different species, yet like many other small things - "unconsidered trifles" - they are very interesting to the botanist; for these are among the smallest and simplest of the flowering plants. Taking up two or three plants from one pond and comparing them with some from another piece of water, we shall probably find a difference in them; but they are all possessed of a more or less flattened green body that floats on the water, and which we shall be inclined to call a leaf. It is not a leaf, however, but a plant that produces no leaves, though it has roots and flowers. To be more accurate we will call it a frond, from whose under-surface there goes down one or more simple unbranched roots, and in clefts of whose margin are simple flowers.
(This section is from the book "
Wayside And Woodland Blossoms", by Edward Step. Also available from Amazon:
Wayside And Woodland Blossoms: A Guide To British Wild-Flowers.)
Where is Duckweed Found?
Lemna minor (
Common Duckweed or ) is a species of
Lemna (duckweed) with a subcosmopolitan distribution, native throughout most of Africa, Asia, Europe and North America, occurring everywhere that freshwater ponds and slow-moving streams occur, except for arctic and subarctic climates. It is not reported as native in Australasia or South America, though is naturalized there.
How does eLemna-8 Work?
eLemna-8 is able to not only penetrate the waxy coating of duckweed (so that algaecides such as EarthTec® can do their work to the interior of the plant, it will actually strip the plant of the wax and allow the plant to die gracefully, floating to the bottom of the pond to become food and biomatter for other aquatic life to gain nutrients from. So in practice, using
eLemna-8 in combination with EarthTec® you are able to accelerate the natural bacterial decomposition of aquatic plants and algae.
Below you will find a few helpful documents about
eLemna-8, including a MSDS sheet and seller information. You may also
purchase eLemna-8 from our store in the blog toolbar below.
Related Research Links for Duckweed:
Lemna minor Lesser Duckweed [Rook.org and USDA Plants Database]
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