Polygonum Flowers…

I was looking in my emersed setups the other day and noticed that a couple of the Polygonum species I had in there were flowering. The flowers on both of these species are in clusters on the end of a stalk. The flowers themselves are quite small, only a few millimeters across.

This particular species is a North American native called Polygonum hydropiperoides. It’s a pretty nice plant that can get red underwater, with nice white flowers when blooming.

Despite being rather small, these flowers are pretty attractive. I especially like the yellow centers. P. hydropiperoides is quite easy to grow and flower in captivity, and I would recommend giving it a try!

The second plant that was flowering is Polygonum praetermissum, but is often sold in the hobby as Polygonum sp. ‘kawagoeanum’. This one can also get red under high light, and is a very nice highlight plant for aquascapes.

The leaf shape is very distinctive, looking similar both submerged and emersed. Emersed, roots can sprout at every node, going into the soil as it creeps along somewhat horizontally.

The P. praetermissum flowers are slightly pink with the flower stalks themselves being a bit more pubescent than the P. hydropiperoides.

The flowers weren’t quite open yet when I took these pictures, but you can see that they’re still fairly nice looking.

Both of these plants would make wonderful outdoor pond plants, that would have the potential to reseed themselves and come back after winter. Comments welcome!