''Hydrocotyle vulgaris'', the marsh pennywort, common pennywort, water naval, money plant, lucky plant or copper coin, is a small creeping aquatic

perennial plant A perennial plant or simply perennial is a plant that lives more than two years. The term ('' per-'' + '' -ennial'', "through the years") is often used to differentiate a plant from shorter-lived annuals and biennials. The term is also wide ...

native to

North Africa North Africa, or Northern Africa is a region encompassing the northern portion of the African continent. There is no singularly accepted scope for the region, and it is sometimes defined as stretching from the Atlantic shores of Mauritania in ...

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

, the

Caucasus The Caucasus () or Caucasia (), is a region between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, mainly comprising Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and parts of Southern Russia. The Caucasus Mountains, including the Greater Caucasus range, have historically ...

and parts of the

Levant The Levant () is an approximate historical geographical term referring to a large area in the Eastern Mediterranean region of Western Asia. In its narrowest sense, which is in use today in archaeology and other cultural contexts, it is eq ...

Description

The plant has an umbrella-like leaf and lives commonly in wet places such as wetlands, marshes and swamps, sometimes even in deeper water. It grows as a

perennial A perennial plant or simply perennial is a plant that lives more than two years. The term ('' per-'' + '' -ennial'', "through the years") is often used to differentiate a plant from shorter-lived annuals and biennials. The term is also wide ...

herbaceous plant Herbaceous plants are vascular plants that have no persistent woody stems above ground. This broad category of plants includes many perennials, and nearly all annuals and biennials. Definitions of "herb" and "herbaceous" The fourth edition of t ...

and only reaches stature heights of 5 to 20 centimeters. With a slight smell of carrot, it is edible. This marsh plant forms numerous, up to 1 meter long, creeping offshoots. The serrated, rounded, shield-shaped leaves can have a diameter of up to 4 centimeters, but are often smaller. The approach of the long, hairy petioles is located in the middle of the leaf underside. The leaves are fresh green, shiny waxy and shows a clear, radially extending vein. The tiny, inconspicuous,

hermaphrodite In reproductive biology, a hermaphrodite () is an organism that has both kinds of reproductive organs and can produce both gametes associated with male and female sexes. Many Taxonomy (biology), taxonomic groups of animals (mostly invertebrate ...

flowers are in low-flowered doldigen

inflorescence An inflorescence is a group or cluster of flowers arranged on a stem that is composed of a main branch or a complicated arrangement of branches. Morphologically, it is the modified part of the shoot of seed plants where flowers are formed o ...

s or whorls, with the stems of the inflorescence about half as long as those of the leaves. The petals are greenish, white or reddish. The flowering period is from July to August. The fruits are flat, warty and winged.

Cultivation

A low maintenance plant, it prefers to grow in reliably moist

humus In classical soil science, humus is the dark organic matter in soil that is formed by the decomposition of plant and animal matter. It is a kind of soil organic matter. It is rich in nutrients and retains moisture in the soil. Humus is the Lati ...

under a full sun or in part shade, indoors or outdoors, though it can tolerate full shade as well. It may also be grown as an aquatic plant in mud at the side of a pond or

water garden Water garden or aquatic garden, is a term sometimes used for gardens, or parts of gardens, where any type of water feature is a principal or dominant element. The primary focus is on plants, but they will sometimes also house waterfowl, or orn ...

in up to 2 inches of stagnant water. Despite its habitat in water, over-watering may still cause

root rot Root rot is a condition in which anoxic conditions in the soil or potting media around the roots of a plant cause them to rot. This occurs due to excessive standing water around the roots. It is found in both indoor and outdoor plants, although ...

Population

The plant is distributed and plentiful throughout much of its range in Europe, North Africa and Western Asia. Nonetheless, it is classed as critically endangered in Croatia, vulnerable in Switzerland and

near threatened A near-threatened species is a species which has been categorized as "Near Threatened" (NT) by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as that may be vulnerable to endangerment in the near future, but it does not currently qualify fo ...

in Norway. Furthermore, the plant is protected under regional legislation in France.

Ecology

In Britain it is the only native ''

Hydrocotyle ''Hydrocotyle'', also called floating pennywort, water pennywort, Indian pennywort, dollar weed, marsh penny, thick-leaved pennywort and even white rot is a genus of prostrate, perennial aquatic or semi-aquatic plants formerly classified in the f ...

'', growing in wet places such as fens, swamps, bogs and marshes. For example, it is a component of

purple moor grass and rush pastures Purple moor grass and rush pastures is a type of Biodiversity Action Plan habitat in the UK. It occurs on poorly drained neutral and acidic soils of the lowlands and upland fringe. It is found in the South West of England, especially in Devon ...

– a type of Biodiversity Action Plan habitat. The flowers rarely bloom; mostly

self-pollination Self-pollination is a form of pollination in which pollen from the same plant arrives at the Stigma (botany), stigma of a flower (in flowering plants) or at the ovule (in gymnosperms). There are two types of self-pollination: in autogamy, pollen i ...

takes place.

Vegetative propagation Vegetative reproduction (also known as vegetative propagation, vegetative multiplication or cloning) is any form of asexual reproduction occurring in plants in which a new plant grows from a fragment or cutting of the parent plant or speci ...

occurs through foothills. In wild plant gardens, the marsh pennywort is used for the planting of garden ponds, and also as

aquarium An aquarium (plural: ''aquariums'' or ''aquaria'') is a vivarium of any size having at least one transparent side in which aquatic plants or animals are kept and displayed. Fishkeepers use aquaria to keep fish, invertebrates, amphibians, aq ...

plant.Manfred A. Fischer, Wolfgang Adler, Karl Oswald: Excursion flora for Austria, Liechtenstein and South Tyrol . 2nd, improved and extended edition. Upper Austria, Biology Center of the Upper Austrian Provincial Museums, Linz 2005, .

Gallery

File:Gewöhnlicher_Wassernabel_PICT8937.JPG, UFO-shaped leaf File:Hydrocotyle_vulgaris_flower_kz.jpg, Flower File:Hydrocotyle_vulgaris_inflorescence_kz.jpg, Inflorescence File:Illustration Hydrocotyle vulgaris0.jpg, Botanical illustration by German botanist

Otto Wilhelm Thomé Otto Wilhelm Thomé (1840–1925) was a German botanist and botanical artist from Cologne, best known for his compendium of botanical illustrations ''Flora von Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz in Wort und Bild für Schule und Haus'' (Flora ...

References

External links

Wildflower.org.uk
website giving photographic description of the plant {{Taxonbar, from=Q158198 vulgaris Flora of Asia Flora of Europe Flora of North Africa Plants described in 1753 Taxa named by Carl Linnaeus