Water Lilies, planted with caution on large lakes or ponds, they need to be accessible for trimming every couple of years. Strong large hybrid varieties (less likely to drop fertile seed) might spread at 2' per year, not so bad in a paddling depth on a warm day... the coarser native varieties may spread 4' per year.
Native varieties like nuphar lutea, alba, odorata can not only spread aggressively in deep water they can drop a lot of fertile seed, very risky on a lake with considerable shallow areas. But then again, the lesser known nuphars like cape fear spatterock or nuphar pumilla minima might settle in quite sedate with spectacular marine like looks, by comparison quite easy to prune compared to the better known 'cow lily'
Lotus.... these can spread by tunneling rhisome 20' or 30' a year. Nuff said... They need cornering in an area easy to get at, say the neck of a stream or outlet
I don't know many varieties 'wise' to put in deep waters... Water crowfoot are good in flowing water, cabomba might do well, hornwort, potamogeton can make quite impressive and attractive stands for fish to skulk among though you may need to fret if they become to keen and mass up.
Alas I don't get to vist much in the way of deep lakes to explore here. If anyone knows lakes not so far from Raleigh of interest I can visit I would very much like to improve my local knowledge here :::nudge nudge::::
Of the cat tails, typha laxmanii is almost reasonable to control, though it may not do well in water more than 2' deep. Many a lake has been lost to Greater Reedmace, an impossible plant to control massing up x20 per year with a brutal tunneling rhisome, rip that out on sight, it will spring up from seed from our feathered friends. I'm sure it's 'Lake Woebegone' when Greater reedmace is allowed to establish
Once you are in the shallow water margin less than two feet deep there are lots of goodies, aquatic iris, arrow arum, pickerel, arrowhead, arum lily, lizards tail, cyperus, thalia, canna can cope with naturalising, not so bad to chop up for new positions when they get to sprawl. Even humble little plants like marsh pennywort and parrots feather can do a superb job of creating great habitat for raising tiddlers
North Carolina is a slightly tricky place for aquatics, many popular varieties that seem so promising on a garden centre shelf aren't really heat tolerant... mare's tail, marsh marigold, bog arum, bogbean can be tried only to fizzle out in a 'big heat'
I'd 'guestimate' that if you have some 20 plus varieties of aquatics established and massed on a pond, varieties which are not too difficult to control, you have quite a resource of juicey roots and nooks and crannies to encourage a host of beneficial tidbits either directly as 'salad' food or by stimulating a continuous supply of crustacean, caterpillars, crickets, snails, tadpoles etc for regular munchies.
Not only that, many of those plants will shelter fish from predators, hot sun, improve water quality especially regarding abstracting toxic metals and nitrites. Alas many lakes fall far short of that and fall into the category, of ermmm barren empty bodies of water
While a well planted pond (or where windblown leaves are the norm) may form up to 4" of silt per year, if you have a favourite couple of places for doing deep dredging sessions every couple of years or so, you will have perhaps one of the most fertile sources of top soil to play with, besides the biggest plumpest fish for supper
Regards, andy
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