Utricularia inflata

Lentibulariaceae

photo by M. Shattock

That Bladderworts catch mini-prey using trigger-activated suction traps is a famous fact. More interesting in that connection is also, depending on the species and place,  algae live in the traps ,apparently more or less symbiotically.   But that’s old news.

Today, the Cypress Creek Natural Area marshland was holiday-decorated with little yellow candles drifting in the blustery winds on the shallow water: Floating Bladderwort it was.  The species is a pretty novelty here, but is expanding its range dramatically northward, in places becoming an invasive pest, such as in the Adirondacks.

Depression marshes are IMHO the most fascinating local habitats, so rich in odd lifeforms, all of them adapted to the seasonal submerged and then sunbaked conditions, as well as to the thick mat of algal/cyanobacterial periphyton.     At the present season much of the water is oh, say, 6 inches deep, containing the periphyton blanket.    Fun to see how the different plants cope with such conditions.   Emergents,  such as Tracy’s Beaksedge (Rhynchospora tracyi) and many others,  poke above the water surface. These species usually have puffy porous “aerenchyma” tissue to ventilate the submerged parts. Other plant species can live submerged for long periods, such as Flattened Pipewort (Eriocaulon compressum), in contrast with its larger relative Ten-Angle Pipewort (E. decangulare), which rises above the water.   Branched Hedgehyssop (Gratiola ramosa) can toggle:  floating freely when flooded, or rooting when times are dry.

Eriocaulon compressum with underwater leaves

But this is all just a lead-up back to Floating Bladderwort which thinks it is a jellyfish.  A jellyfish is free-floating with a floating (or not floating) disk having attached prey-catching tentacles.    So is Floating Bladderwort, in a sense.    The free-floating disk is the whorl of leaves, looking like horizontal wheel spokes.  Now look deeper:  its predatory “tentacles” dangle in the water below. 

Fills a niche in the shallow brown marsh similar to a jellyfish drifting happily in the deep blue sea.