WordNet
n. a plant that grows partly or wholly in water whether rooted in the mud, as a lotus, or floating without anchorage, as the water hyacinth [syn: water plant, hydrophyte, hydrophytic plant]
Wikipedia
Aquatic plants are plants that have adapted to living in aquatic environments ( saltwater or freshwater). They are also referred to as hydrophytes or macrophytes. These plants require special adaptations for living submerged in water, or at the water's surface. The most common adaptation is aerenchyma, but floating leaves and finely dissected leaves are also common. Aquatic plants can only grow in water or in soil that is permanently saturated with water. They are therefore a common component of wetlands.
The principal factor controlling the distribution of aquatic plants is the depth and duration of flooding. However, other factors may also control their distribution, abundance, and growth form, including nutrients, disturbance from waves, grazing, and salinity.
Aquatic vascular plants have originated on multiple occasions in different plant families; they can be ferns or angiosperms (including both monocots and dicots). Seaweeds are not vascular plants; rather they are multicellular marine algae, and therefore are not typically included among aquatic plants. A few aquatic plants are able to survive in brackish, saline, and salt water. Examples are found in genera such as Thalassia and Zostera. Although most aquatic plants can reproduce by flowering and setting seed, many also have extensive asexual reproduction by means of rhizomes, turions, and fragments in general.
One of the largest aquatic plants in the world is the Amazon water lily; one of the smallest is the minute duckweed. Many small aquatic animals use plants like duckweed for a home, or for protection from predators, but areas with more vegetation are likely to have more predators. Some other familiar examples of aquatic plants might include floating heart, water lily, lotus, and water hyacinth.
Some aquatic plants are used by humans as a food source. Examples include wild rice ( Zizania), water caltrop ( Trapa natans), Chinese water chestnut ( Eleocharis dulcis), Indian lotus ( Nelumbo nucifera), water spinach ( Ipomoea aquatica), and watercress ( Rorippa nasturtium-aquaticum).
Usage examples of "aquatic plant".
To the same natural order as the Mare's Tail (Haloragaceae) belongs the Water Milfoil, which has the following varieties: Spiked Water Milfoil (Myriophyllum spicatum), an aquatic plant forming a tangled mass of slender, much branched stems.
The bottom contained a veritable jungle of aquatic plant life, including lacy palaces of some shell-like substance that glowed with rainbows of color.
This is a semi-aquatic plant growing in ditches and on the banks of pools and rivers, though not very common in England.
At the Japanese exhibit, visitors were each given a sample of the flowering aquatic plant native to Latin America.
Whittlesey, who had inadvertently used a certain aquatic plant as packing fibers for the specimens he'd sent back to the Museum.
Margo realized it was some kind of aquatic plant, similar to a lily pad.
Whittlesey, who had inadvertently used a certain aquatic plant as packing fibers for the specimens he’.
Whittlesey, who had inadvertently used a certain aquatic plant as packing fibers for the specimens hed sent back to the Museum.
Conduits on the wall had split open, allowing optical fibers to drift out like some kind of slender aquatic plant.