Feeling sore after a long week of sprucing up landscapes and beautifying gardens.  Eagleson Landscape Co. was and still is very busy installing patios, putting down mulch and bringing landscapes to life!  It’s been a great week and I am excited to research and write about this weeks wild and wonderful plant species.  We will explore one of the wildest species found around the world.  An organism that is in almost every body of water, in every part of the world.  The worlds smallest flowering plant, the Wolffia species!

A truly incredible plant, that reminds me of Nerds candy, the spherical Wolffia is on average only 1 mm in size, but can be even smaller!  To put that into perspective, at that size the Wolffia could fit easily through the eye of a needle.  These tiny plants have no stems, leaves or roots and produce microscopic flowers and the world’s smallest fruit.  Wolffia reproduce very quickly, with some species budding every 30 hours.  A staggering rate that means one Wolffia could produce enough offspring in four months to equal the earth in spherical volume.  That is truly unbelievable.  Wolffia are also a great source of protein and edible!  Perhaps you will see them on the shelves of you local food market soon!

If you want to read more about this species please go to this website.  It will provide you not only with some amazing information, but great visual references to their size.