Subject: Re: Water Hyacinth (fwd)

From: "le Maitre, Dave" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Nov 1994 10:02:00 EST

Don Bass wrote:
>Friends:
>    I had suggested that John Dietling might forward my questions and
>issues concerning the water hyacinth to Ecolog, however I decided to
>subscribe and as my questions directly..
>    John Dietling has informed my that the plant and duckweed is
>currently used in Austin, Texas as a wastewater strategy.
>    The Chinese were evidently using a long fiber of the hyacinth to
>their advantage.
>    Thank you for your interest, if you should be able to response to
>any of my questions.
>    Don Bass
This plant has been a horrendous problem in South Africa but is now
reasonably under control as far as I know.  If I remember correctly (article
was in an engineering journal) it has been used extensively in Europe for
water recycling. It apparently has an exceptional ability (at least compared
to non-aquatic plants) to accumulate heavy metal ions and complexes in its
tissues. The pictures I remember showed it being grown in large shallow
dams. The plants were regularly harvested and incinerated to extract the
metals etc.

David
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David Le Maitre
Forestek CSIR
Private Bag X5011
Stellenbosch
South Africa
Tel +27 21 883-9771
Fax +27 21 883-8394
E-mail [email-masked]
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