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Eichhornia crassipes (Mart.) Solms (ITIS)
Common water-hyacinth, floating water hyacinth
South America (Zhang et al. 2010)
1884 (Zhang et al. 2010)
Ornamental (Toft et al. 2003)
Forms dense colonies that block sunlight and crowd out native species (Toft et al. 2003)
Water hyacinth, plants at Mara River
Photo by Ted D. Center; USDA, Agricultural Research Service
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Selected Resources
The section below contains highly relevant resources for this species, organized by source.
Council or Task Force
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Federal Government
International Government
State and Local Government
Integrated Taxonomic Information System. Eichhornia crassipes. [Accessed Sep 10, 2014].
Toft, J.D., C.A Simenstad, J.R. Cordell, and L.F. Grimaldo. 2003. The effects of introduced water hyacinth on habitat structure, invertebrate assemblages, and fish diets. Estuaries 26(3):746-758.
Zhang, Y., D. Zhang, and S.C. Barrett. 2010. Genetic uniformity characterizes the invasive spread of water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes), a clonal aquatic plant. Molecular Ecology 19(9):1774-1786.