How beautiful!!! Mine bloomed last week but, since I have only 3 plants, they were nowhere near as beautiful as yours. Thanks!

Beautiful flowers! I had hyacinths in my ponds, too. But they did not bloom due to lack of enough sunlight better or worse.

Hi
Have you ever had them produce viable seed.?? In most
warm areas they are listed as "Noxious weeds" . Have two ponds separated by around 15 feet yet the one has always remained free of it .All those flowers there MUST be seeds?? i don't really see any danger putting them in disconnected ponds . They are the worlds best water filter.
Thanks gary

In Ohio we treat them as annuals. They die after our first frost. I usually take them out of the pond before the first frost. Otherwise, they mush up and I can't get them out.

Jenny

Beautiful!

Gorgeous. I just wish mine would bloom this year :(

If you want them to last, you have to move to the tropics! We have a heap of them sitting on dry land for over a year, waiting to compost, but the pesky little buggers keep growing and blooming instead. They do work well as groundcover, keeping the grass down.

I just bought some water hyacinths a few days ago, and I was also wondering if they set seed. I did a little research and found the following info:

Water hyacinth may or may not set fruit, depending on temperature. They are thought to be self-pollinated. The more tropical the climate (like Florida), the more likely that seeds will be produced. No seed is produced in the northern U.S., as far as I can find (I suspect the maturing season is too short.)

If the flowers are pollinated, fruits will form after flowers wither. The fruits are three-celled seed capsules that remain submerged and protected by the perianth (flower sepals and petals). Seed-bearing stalks bend into the water, and 18 days later seeds are released from the capsules into the water. The seeds require warm, shallow water and high light intensity for germination. (Won't happen here in WA!)

A capsule can hold 450 seeds. Water hyacinth seeds are tiny ribbed ovals one-eighth inch wide. Seeds germinate best in water-logged soil, and the seedlings appear on mud banks.

The Southeast Exotic Pest Plant Council says that seeds can be viable for up to 20 years.

Sue

Sue
I live in s. florida and find that they can survive
everything though there is an obvious decline in the 40's
I was always curious about "seeds " because they flower for at least 10 months of the year but seeds are never obvious. Nor have I ever had obvious seedlings and they never moved to another pond less than 15 feet away
So my conclusion was that while they are a "Noxious weed " they can be controlled I find them irreplaceable as a water filter.lol So easy to harvet since they never root and make wonderful mulch .
Another curious aspect to them is the dark purple ,surrounded with yellow "eyespot" Most plants that flower that way do so to attract a particular pollinator
Seems odd they would expend so much energy flowering when they offset by the gazillions lol
setconi Here in florida they will die if they don't have standing water. If there are heavy rains it will prolong the period . I find they make wonderful mulch for that reason very light and breakdown very rapidly and they pull nutrients from the water by the ton .
Sue thanks for that info I can sort of fuigure out why mine don't seed. gary

Can you start these from seed??? I live in a small town and the only way it seems for me to find these is to drive an hour and half away or have them shipped to me.

I have a big plastic flower pot of water that I over winter tropicals in every winter and the 3 to 4 water hyacinths I put in it survive until spring. They look a little ratty but after a week outside they perk up and start making babies. I don't remember when I bought them because I just keep a few offspring to start up the next year.

It got down to freezing in the sun room this year and that hurt some of the annuals that I had brought in but the ratty WH survived and now I am giving them away.

Don't you know those are invasive

Well, this is an old thread, but I thought I would add that, yes, they ARE invasive but only in the right climate. They die off if the temps here get below 40 degrees so there would be no chance of them getting out of control.