Plant Wiki

The open plant encyclopedia

Know any plant.
Grow it well.

Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.

  • 13,000+plants with full pages
  • 365,000+plant species worldwide
  • 220+countries covered

Common in

See all

The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.

What do you want to do?

Popular plants

Browse all plants

See them in 3D

All plants in 3D

Browse plants

Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.

Plant Wiki › Browse plants

Pillwort

Pilularia

Also called Pillworts

Pillwort
Photo: Unknown author, Public domain

Pillwort (Pilularia) is a genus of small, aquatic-to-marginal ferns with thread-like leaves and creeping rhizomes, grown mainly by water gardeners and bog enthusiasts. Keep the roots moist or submerged in wet soil or shallow water, and provide plenty of light.

Family
Marsileaceae (Marsile family)
Grows as
Fern
Light
Full sun, Part shade
Water
Keep constantly wet or submerged in shallow water; never let it dry out.
Soil
Wet, mineral-rich mud or sandy loam, or shallow pond margins.
Temperature
10–25 °C; tolerates cool winters but protect from hard freeze.
How easy
Moderate

About

Pilularia or pillworts is a genus of unusual ferns of family Marsileaceae distributed in North Temperate regions, Ethiopian mountains, and the southern hemisphere in Australia, New Zealand, and western South America.

Depending on the taxonomic revisor, the genus contains between 3 and 6 species of small plants with thread-like leaves, and creeping rhizomes. The sporangia are borne in spherical sporocarps ("pills") which form in the axils of leaves. Pilularia minuta from SW Europe is one of the smallest of all ferns.

Other Pilularia plants

American pillwort · Dwarf Pillwort

Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Pilularia 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.

Credits & terms

Identify a plant

Point at a leaf or flower and snap. One plant in frame works best.

Your photo
Starting camera…