Monday, September 22, 2025

Marsh dewflower

 The delicate flowers in the wetlands are Murdannia keisak. The Marsh dewflower is a spiderwort, an Asian species.

The flowers are white with tints of blue, purple and pink. They remind me of Japanese watercolors. I found a stand near a pond southwest of Stone Mountain.

It grows thick, choking mats in wetlands. Biologists fear the invasive species will crowd out the natives.

A lot of the invasive species on public lands escaped from gardens. But this one didn’t. The prevailing theory is that it came to North America as a weed in rice imported by farmers in South Carolina.

• Source: For the truly curious, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s “Marsh Dewflower (Murdannia keisak): Ecological Risk Screening Summary, published April 11, 2024, is here:

https://www.fws.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2025-01/ecological-risk-screening-summary-marsh-dewflower.pdf

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