# Submerged Freshwater Aquatic Veggies of Hawaii



## Steve001 (Feb 26, 2011)

I haven't done a search on this in a long while and when I have I've not found anything at all except today, I found this. Can anyone add to what's said below ?


> I'm interested in freshwater aquatic, preferably submerged, plants indigenous or native to Hawaii, could you please give me information about them? I tried searching the Internet, including this site, about this particular kind of plants, unsuccessfully. Does the plants I'm searching even exist? I was, at the same time, wondering about introduced plants (Anarchist, Hornwort, etc.), usually used in aquariums, effected the aquatic native plants, if they exist at all.
> *Answer:*
> We have one native vascular plant, Ruppia maritima, which is usually found in brackish water habitats. Other than this, our compliment of native freshwater plants consists of several species of algae, none of which have been studied in great detail.
> 
> ...


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## plantbrain (Dec 15, 2003)

Sounds fairly accurate to me regarding freshwater habitat in the islands.
Duckweed or something may have made it before humans, that'd be about it. 
I think the best area is the macro algae groups in the marine system if you are interested in native species and invasive impacts.


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## Steve001 (Feb 26, 2011)

How about aquatic mosses ?


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## plantbrain (Dec 15, 2003)

Steve001 said:


> How about aquatic mosses ?


Some might live in freshwater, I'm not sure they are true natives. Some of the cloud forest moss and liverwort , perhaps some ferns could be adaptative to submersion with CO2, say from upper 3000-6000ft range on some of the islands.

I've seen some species in deeper valleys, eg, Hanakap'i Falls on Kauai, maybe 800ft elevation, along the Hana Highway on Maui, Mt Kaala on Oahu and perhaps a dozen spots on the Big island and plenty on the wet side of Molokai. These species are ubiquitous anywhere there's habitat left. We have some analogous species in CA that will leaf out nicely during the rainy season. 
King Peak on the lost coast of CA, gets close to the same type of rainfall as the 4000ft levels in the islands(well over 200 inches a year). Bit colder, saw some snow there this year, but ferns and mosses cover the place. May-July are good times to go.

Here's some pics from the Alaka'i swamp:


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## Steve001 (Feb 26, 2011)

It's surprising considering the length of time some of the islands have existed that no plant has found an aquatic niche. Beautiful pics btw.


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