Aquatic Plants

Aquatic plants are the plants that have adapted to aquatic environments. Aquatic plants require special adaptations for living submerged in water or at the water’s surface (Anonymous, 2000). Endemic aquatic plants are found in naturally only in Sri Lanka and indigenous aquatic plants are found in Sri Lanka and overseas. Most of the aquatic plants have high ornamental value. Also, they have medicinal and nutritional value. But mainly due to the endemic value of the aquatic plants, they have a huge demand.

Ornamental Aquatic Plants

Sri Lanka harbors over 370 aquatic or wetland plant species (IUCN, 2012). Those plants belong to 46 families consisted of 39 angiosperm families with 64 genera, 6 fern families with 6 genera and one liverwort. There are 76% of ornamental aquatic pants were recorded as non-native or exotic species. Ornamental Aquatic Plant Species can be classified based on their growth habit; floating, fully submerged, emerged, rooted plants with floating leaves and marginal (Yakandawala D. and Yakandawala K., 2007).

This aquatic vegetation also referred as hydrophytes or aquatic macrophytes.

Why we need to know?

The threatened endemic aquatic plants (eg: - Cryptocoryne spp., Lagenandra spp.) have been severely affected because of over collection from wild habitats for the exportation purpose of ornamental trade. At present most of this species were disappeared (IUCN, 2012).

Moreover, there can be some identification issues of some aquatic plants. Because there are different species with similar morphological characters. Other than that, there are more than one species which are bearing the same common name. Those can be led to frequent delays (Shantha Siri and Wijesundara, 2004).