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Re: Aquatic Plant Field Guide and green water and mystery flowers

>------------------------------
>
>Date: Fri, 15 Sep 2000 17:20:23 EDT
>From: Johnpitselos2000 at cs_com
>Subject: Aquatic Plant Field Guide
>
>A 228 page, native North American aquatic plant field guide entitled Through
>The
>Looking Glass has been published by UM. Sending a check for $22 made to the
>University of Minnesota mailed to Minnesota Sea Grant, 2305 East Fifth
>Street, Duluth, MN 55812-1445 will get it.  the reference provides
>descriptions of emergent, floating and submerged plants' range, habitats,
>place in ecology, etc., with illustrations.  Sounds interesting.  Can anyone
>review it for our list?
>

I looked the title up on Amazon.com and, after wading through several
hundred Lewis Carrol references, found it listed as :Through the Looking
Glass: a Field Guide to Aquatic Plants, by Susan Borman, Robert Korth, and
Carol Watkins (illustrator) University of Wisconsin Press, ISBN 023231032X,
256 pp., June, 1998.  Amazon is selling it for $24.95.

Since, I can't seem to get back to sleep, tonight, I looked up U. Minnesota
Sea Grant, and found that they sell the book for $17.00.


I found the following description of the book on an American Association of
Uinversity Presses site:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Susan Borman, Robert Korth, and Jo Temte Through the Looking Glass: A Field
Guide to Aquatic Plants. Illustrations by Carol Watkins. 256 pp. 120
drawings 1998

                           ISBN: 0-932310-32-X Paper $24.95 Available now

                           This delightful, large-format field guide to
aquatic plants in North America is accessible and inviting to general
readers, yet detailed enough for use by botanists and natural resource
managers. Covering freshwater plants and some found in brackish waters, the
book is organized into sections on emergent plants, free-floating plants,
floating-leaf plants, and submersed plants. Charming habitat drawings
introduce each section. The fine pen and ink drawings for each species
showing the entire plant are supplemented, where helpful, with detailed
drawings of leaves, stem cross-sections, seeds, flowers, and other
distinguishing features. Nature lovers, waterfront property owners,
teachers and students, and water resource specialists will enjoy this
closer look at aquatic plants, from the familar cattail and wild rice to
the more obscure bladderworts and milfoils.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
So, it looks like the Minnesota Sea Grant site:
http://www.d.umn.edu/seagr/pubs/seiche/april.99/art8.html
is the place to go to get the book cheap.


>------------------------------
>
>Date: Fri, 15 Sep 2000 15:34:10 -0700 (PDT)
>From: Jim Miller <ruddigar_99 at yahoo_com>
>Subject: green water
>
>  Now I know that green water is something that we
>usually want to avoid, but I was wondering is anyone
>has a surefire formula for producing it.  I need some
>for a Daphnia culture, and I thought that maybe if
>someone knew how to make it, doing the opposite would
>prevent it, or even get rid of it.
>
>Thanks
>
>J. Miller
>Edmonton, AB, Can.


A guppy tank with no plants and good lighting, such as three watts per
gallon, should produce an endless supply of green water. Feed the guppies
liberally.   If you don't get green water from that, it must be because you
don't have even a single cell of planktonic algae in the tank to start
with. Basically, any fish in an open, well-lit tank should do the job.
Perhaps bluegreen algae (cyanobacteria) might take over, but it is my
experience that, if the green water gets established first---and it almost
always does---it wins out over bluegreen algae.  I once helped design a
set-up to produce fresh-water hydra for research.  It had several
cylindrical tanks holding about 5 gallons, each with a goldfish and a 20
watt fluorescent light strapped to the side.  These produced green water
which was fed to Daphnia, which were fed, in turn, to the Hydra.


>------------------------------
>
>Date: Fri, 15 Sep 2000 20:30:56 -0400
>From: "Kevin Zippel" <kczippel at worldnet_att.net>
>Subject: mystery flowers?
>
>Tonight I noticed dozens of tiny flower like structures floating in one of
>my aquariums.  They are not much bigger than a grain of sand.  Under the
>scope, they appear to have 4 or so white/clear cup like structures at the
>base of what appear to be 2 stamens with yellow frilly heads.  Any ideas
>what these are and where they came from?  They seem to be centered around
>the Riccia mats, but they might have just been carried there by the current.
>Thanks, Kevin
>

If you have any Vallisneria in your tank, the mystery flowers could be
flowers from a male plant.  It releases small floating flowers that float
around and contact the female flowers that are on a long, slender, coiled
stalk.



Paul Krombholz, in central Mississippi where we got some rain recently, but
still have a long way to go to catch up.