🌿 Water Lettuce (Pistia stratiotes)

Ideal for Aquaponics • Water Purification • Fish Habitat • Eco-Towers

Price:
• R15 per rosette
• R40 for 3 rosettes
(fresh, healthy plants)

⭐ What You’re Getting

This is Water Lettuce (Pistia stratiotes), a bright green, free-floating aquatic plant with soft, velvety leaves that form attractive lettuce-like rosettes on the water surface.
Each rosette floats freely and produces long, feathery roots that hang down into the water.

Water lettuce is widely used because it:

Absorbs excess nutrients efficiently
Improves water clarity and stability
Creates habitat for fish and beneficial microbes

🌱 Why Water Lettuce Is So Valuable

✔ Fast, Easy Growth
Water lettuce spreads naturally by runners in warm, sunny conditions. It establishes quickly from just a few rosettes and is easy to thin or harvest as needed.

✔ Powerful Natural Water Cleaner
The dense root systems act like a living filter, removing:

Ammonia and nitrogen
Phosphates
Fine suspended particles

Perfect for improving water quality in ponds, fish systems, and aquaponics setups.

✔ Excellent Fish & Fry Habitat
The hanging roots provide shelter and feeding grounds for:

Small fish and fry
Shrimp and snails
Beneficial bacteria

This helps reduce stress on aquatic life and improves overall system balance.

✔ Helps Control Algae
By shading the water surface and competing for nutrients, water lettuce naturally suppresses algae growth without chemicals.

✔ Low Maintenance, High Return
No soil, no planting, no electricity.
It floats, grows, cleans water, and multiplies — making it ideal for simple, low-energy systems.

🌎 How It Fits the MaterialCycle Vision

MaterialCycle is about small, regenerative loops that turn waste streams into value.
Water lettuce fits this perfectly:

Excess nutrients → living biomass
Dirty water → cleaner, more stable systems
Sunlight → growth and filtration

This same principle drives the MaterialCycle Towers:
simple materials, modular biology, and circular flows that work whenever the sun shines.

💧 Ideal For

Aquaponics and fish systems
Ponds and water features
Water polishing and nutrient removal
Fry and shrimp habitat
Algae control
Eco-Tower and modular water experiments

📦 Availability

Harvested fresh from clean, circulating systems.
Pickup in Cape Town