Pond Boss Forums AQUATIC VEGETATION Identifying plants Hybrid water lilies

In a previous post in the Help topic, I had asked about the hybrid water liles that were mentioned. Can anyone give me info on these? Do they spread or does "hybrid" mean they won't? I want the right kind of fish hiding vegetation in my pond.

B. Morris - Hybrid water lilies are crosses between established varieties to achieve desired plant traits; most often flower color, size or petal arrangement or number. The hybrids are often grouped into three spreading catagories. Small (dwarf), medium & large. Those designations also I find are estimates of how deep they will grow. Small, I find, usually grows in less than 3 ft of water, Medium will grow 2-4ft deep and large will grow down to 6-8 ft deep, usu depending on water clarity. How fast they grow and spread is dependant on the hardness of the pond bottom soil. Obviously softer sediments promote faster spreading. Hard packed clay pond bottom does not allow very fast spread of the lilies. Water plants tend to make the water clearer to promote their depth of spread. IMPORTANT NOTE: I almost always encounter "piggy back" invasive plant species in potted lilies or tangled in the roots. These "piggy back " plants are always something you do not want in your pond! Be careful. I always advise a quarantine of all lilies before planting them in the pond. A quarantine for me is first planting them in a dish pan or cut off bottom of a 5 gal bucket for several months or 1 yr.to check for other growing contaminated plants. B. cody

Bill, thanks for your input. I was curious about these plants since I always liked to fish the lilies on large lakes. Will think hard before introducing to my pond.

The hardy hybrids rhisome might grow along the soil of a lake at the rate of three feet a year, it wouldnt be good idea to plant them deeper than in water than is comfortable to paddle in, three feet deep is a reasonable 'maximum' depth for planting any size water lily, they do flower best where the rhisome is not too cold or too dark for light to get to the crowns.

A good arrangement is to place large 'tubs' with clay and heavy loam, with about two to three feet of water over them, place say two or three crowns on a tub, in about three years time they will be well established and sending rhisomes out of the basket, which are easy to crop off when growing off a basket rim.

If planted direct in a lake bed, waterlilies would be much more difficult to control, as they take to wandering... you would find it difficult to paddle around and sort them out, or to lift the rooted rhisome, compared to starting them on tubs.

One advantage of the tubs is, it becomes possible to lift the tub up, say on to a milk crate for trimming, or even attach flotation drums and float them off to another position or to shallow water to do a little cropping



Regards, Andy