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Potamogeton lucens
Shining pondweed is a large, submerged aquatic perennial with translucent, shiny netted leaves, grown mainly in ponds and pools. The key to growing it is a deep, still or slow-flowing calcareous water body with a rooting substrate such as sand or aquatic compost.
Potamogeton lucens, or shining pondweed, is an aquatic perennial plant native to Eurasia and North Africa. It grows in relatively deep, still or slow-flowing, calcareous freshwater habitats.
Shining pondweed is rarely cultivated, even though it is both easy to grow and an attractive plant. Its distinctive, large, transparent netted leaves are unlike any other commonly cultivated pond plant. In common with other pondweeds of this group it roots poorly from stem cuttings and is best propagated by division of the rhizomes. It is easy to grow in a garden pond or even in a barrel, but unlike some other submerged plants needs to be able to root in a suitable substrate such as sand or aquatic compost. Plants being established should be weighted down initially to allow them to root. Where waterfowl grazing is likely, protection will be necessary, especially in the early summer growth period.
A furanolabdane diterpenoid extracted from P. lucens is algicidal.
Dried and ground shining pondweed has been shown to be effective at binding heavy metals, raising the possibility of using biomass from this plant as a means of treating contaminated sediments.
Potamogeton lucens is native to Europe (including Britain, continental Europe, Scandinavia), Asia (Afghanistan, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan), the Middle East and North Africa. In North America it is replaced by the rather similar P. illinoensis.
Alpine pondweed · Small Pondweed · Fen Pondweed · Grass-wrack pondweed · Curly pondweed · Little-leaf pondweed · Pondweed · Waterthread pondweed · Ribbonleaf pondweed · Variableleaf pondweed · Illinois pondweed · Potamogeton ×inbaensis
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Potamogeton lucens 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.
