ABSTRACT
Water hyacinth Eichhornia crassipes (Mart. and Zucc.) Solms belongs to Family Pontederiaceae and is an aquatic perennial free-floating plant and also a noxious, unique, useful, fast growing, and persistent invasive macrophyte. The morphological elasticity of water hyacinth is defined as the morphological adaption to the environment, underscoring a species-specific strategy for successful competition in a given habitat and a capacity to invade ecosystems. The morphology of roots plus fast growth rate under suitable conditions enables a hectare of water surface fully covered by water hyacinth to daily absorb the amount of nitrogen and phosphorus emitted by 800 people in one day. Water hyacinth roots can also remove heavy metals, such as cadmium, lead, mercury, thallium, silver, cobalt and strontium, as well as organic pollutants, including antibiotics that can be present in sewage. The interesting characteristic of water hyacinth biology is its sponge tissue in root, stolon, rhizome, subfloat, float and pseudo-lamina.
