Pond Clearance

I STILL DON'T KNOW the name of the floating plant which takes over our pond each year but it's certainly invasive as I've recently seen it colonising two of the less disturbed backwaters of the canal. I suspect that it is an introduced water plant that has found it's way into water courses. I don't remember ever having bought any but it could have been introduced to the pond by mallards flying in from nearby ponds or possibly brought in with other plants that I've collected from friends' ponds.

In the canal the leaves grow larger than they do in our pond, probably because the thready white roots have a greater depth of water to draw on.

It's taken over most of a disused lock between the canal and the river and I'm afraid this might have obliterated a patch of open water where I've occasionally seen a kingfisher perching. The leaves grow so luxuriantly they stop light penetrating below and the roots grow in such a solid mass they leave little space for any water creatures to move about.

As I raked out the floating plant, I was glad to see that the clumps of oxygenated pondweed (left) that I'd thrown into the pond in the spring, have survived and multiplied. I untangled any sprigs of it I found amongst the dripping mat of white roots and threw them back in the water.

Pond Skater

Water Boatman

The introduced water plant