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Aldrovanda vesiculosa
Also called Waterwheel, Waterwheel plant, Bladderwort
A rootless, free-floating aquatic carnivorous plant that traps small invertebrates with snap-shut leaves arranged in whorls around a stem. It needs clean, still or slow-moving water with plenty of light, and is rare in the wild and hard to keep in cultivation.
Aldrovanda vesiculosa, commonly known as the waterwheel plant, is the sole extant species in the flowering plant genus Aldrovanda of the family Droseraceae. The plant captures small aquatic invertebrates using traps similar to those of the Venus flytrap. The traps are arranged in whorls around a central, free-floating stem, giving rise to the common name. This is one of the few plant species capable of rapid movement.
While the genus Aldrovanda is now monotypic, up to 19 extinct species are known in the fossil record. While the species displays a degree of morphological plasticity between populations, A. vesiculosa possesses a very low genetic diversity across its entire range.
Aldrovanda vesiculosa is the second most widely distributed carnivorous plant species, only behind members of the genus Utricularia, native to Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia. Aldrovanda is spread mainly through the movement of waterfowl: plants sticking to the feet of a bird are transported to the next aquatic destination on the bird's route. As a result, most Aldrovanda populations are located along avian migratory routes. Throughout the last century the species has become increasingly rare, listed as extinct in an increasingly large number of countries. In the 1970s, carnivorous plant hobbyists introduced this species to small backyard ponds in the United States in the states of New Jersey, Virginia, and the Catskills of New York, and they may be a potentially invasive species due to their effects on aquatic invertebrates.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Aldrovanda vesiculosa by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
