The Water Hyacinth:
A Problem or a Possibility
Description and Rationale
The scientific name for the water hyacinth is “Eichornia crassipes.” It is a warm water plant that is said to only be able to survive in temperatures above twenty degrees Fahrenheit, but it there is no known evidence to support the theory. The water hyacinth is not native to the Philippines, but was introduced to parts of it. It was first introduced to the Pasig River by a Fil-American group that was trying to clean the Pasig in 2005; the plant grew very quickly and has spread rapidly.
What does the Water Hyacinth do for the people living off of the river’s resources? Is it a threat to other plants or animals in the ecosystem? Does the plant cause flooding? Can the plant slow down river transportation for man? Is the plant beautiful or disastrous for the environment?
Can the water hyacinth be used for food or a livelihood of people? Are there any beneficial uses for the water hyacinth? If there is a industry for food, crafts, furniture, or baskets made out of the plant, would it be possible to enlarge the production of the industry? What would be an effective way to tell people about its benefits if there are any?
The projects purpose is to research the biology and ecology of the water hyacinth in the Pasig River, by interviewing people that deal with the plant in ether fishing, teaching or daily life. The research will also include hands on observation and experiments in an effort to discover use’s for the water hyacinth, which will hopefully solve any problems presented by the plant.
The research will hopefully uncover uses for the water hyacinth that will economically help the people living in the Pasig River area and regulate the spread of the water hyacinth.
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Biology
Common Names and Synonyms
Eichhornia crassipes is known as the Water Hyacinth by most of the world. Here in the Philippines it is called the water lily. In Malay it is known as the Keladi Buntingwhich in English means "pregnant tuber" it is called this because its stalk inflates to keep it floating.
Classification
Kingdom: Plantae – Plants
Subkingdom: Tracheobionta – Vascular plants
Superdivision: Spermatophyta – Seed plants
Division: Magnoliophyta – Flowering plants
Class: Liliopsida – Monocotyledons
Subclass: Liliidae
Order: Liliales
Family: Pontederiaceae – Water-Hyacinth family
Genus: Eichhornia
Species: E. crassipes
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Morphology and Physical Description
The plant varies in size from a few inches to over three feet tall. They have shiny green leaves that range in shape from round to oval. The leaves can grow up-to-ten inches in diameter, although smaller leaves are very common. The leaves are attached to petioles that are normally inflated to help the plant stay afloat.
The Water Hyacinth has flowers that grow to about 2-3 inches with six petals that are purple, blue, lilac, or white. One of the petals bears a yellow spot. The plants roots dangle underneath in a dark tangled mass. The fruit of the plant is a capsule made up of three cells; inside the cells are multiple small, ribbed seeds.
One of the interesting features of the Water Hyacinth is that the plant is in no way attached to the ground; instead it forms rafts with other water hyacinths connected by their entangled roots. The plant does not stay in one place normally, but floats around using its leaves as sails.
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Getting Food
Eichhornia crassipes draw their nutrients from the water well also performing photosynthesis. The water hyacinth floats on the surface of the water and sometimes drifts about. It lives in fresh water and can survive in almost any pH range. It is thought to only be able to survive in temperatures above twenty degrees Fahrenheit growing best in tropical climates.
Reproduction
The Eichhornia crassipes reproduces sexually using seeds which can be dispersed by birds and remain viable for 15-20 years. However, the main manner of reproduction is vegetatively, through stolons. A single plant under the right type of conditions has been known to produce over 3,000 others in a little over 50 days, and cover a vicinity of 6458.5576 sq feet in a single year. The plant grows better in slow moving or stationary fresh water such as ponds or lakes.
Environmental Factors
The water hyacinths have natural predators but for the most part they are unable to keep the plant under control. Its predators include fish (Chinese grass carp-- (Ctenopharyngo idella), Tilapia melanopleura and T. mossambica) and manatees. Two weevils, a moth and two types of fungi also feed on Eichhornia crassipes. Water hyacinth competes with other aquatic plants for space and sunlight; it is a very dominant plant that over powers the other competition.
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Origin and Distribution
Eichhornia crassipes originally was introduced to the rest of the warmer climatic world from South America. One of the major reasons for its spread was because of its natural beauty as an ornament. The plant was introduced to the US in the 1880’s and afterward Africa and India in the 1950’s, from which it quickly spread to Asia and Australia.
Importance to People
The water hyacinth is marketed for water gardening and home pond community as a plant with an unusual type of beauty that has a fascinating ability to suck nutrients out of the water; it has continued to spread further into Asia and the US. The water hyacinth is used in some countries as a source to make craft products, such as baskets and furniture. In South East Asia the plant is used as a pig food. In the Philippines it is intentionally used by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) as a filtering system for the many polluted rivers in the Manila area. Because of the expositional growth rates of the plant it is very hard if not impossible to keep under complete control, as a result of this it has became a transportation hazard in the Pasig River.
Eichhornia crassipes grows at such a rapid pace that it becomes a problem for water transportation and blocks irrigation canals, destroys rice fields, and ruins fishing grounds. By shading the water, the plant deprives native aquatic plants of sunlight and animals of oxygenated water. When the mats of water hyacinth begin to decay, the nutrient levels in the water increase extremely rapidly, this sparks off the algal growth that further decreases oxygen levels in the water.
Survivability and Endangered Status
The water hyacinth is in no way endangered; it grows at an exponential rate and is a highly invasive species. Many countries have banned the importing of the plant into their homelands; while other countries purposely have imported it to provide a craft and furniture industry. In the Philippines like many other countries it has become a nuisance two some fish farms and transportation along the rivers. For a few families living in southern Luzon making crafts to sell out of the water hyacinth has become a livelihood.
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Potential Solutions
The water hyacinth as far as my research has indicated has not directly caused very many problems in the Pasig River, although it has contributed in a negative way to transportation and flooding problems. It is also possible that if it were to be left to grow with out opposition, it mite eventually choke out the other aquatic life living in the river. At the current time the plant seems to be a neutral factor in the Pasig, being nether good nor bad as of yet, this Is because of the government’s attempts to keep it in check. The problem is that these attempts are costly and time consuming add do not fully get rid of the plant from the river. It is a waste of money and a natural resource not to find a way to turn the water hyacinth into a livelihood for the people living in and around the Pasig River area. Below are three potential solutions each having both negatives and positives for why or why not they would be good solutions.
Possibility 1: Pig Food
A report by the Department of Animal Husbandry, Faculty of Agriculture, Cantho University Cantho, Vietnam and Japan International Research Center for Agriculture Sciences stated that water hyacinth shoots mixed with molasses is good supplement for more commercial pig feed, farmers in Malaysia, Japan, Uganda and other Asian and African countries are already using this method of pig feeding as a daily part of their life.
Advantages:
1. There is such an abundance of water hyacinth that it could be made into pig feed for a cheap price and sold for less then most other pig feeds. The poorer people living in the Pasig area could easily learn how to make the pig feed and then sell it to the pig farms; this would give the people in the area a livelihood.
2. The water hyacinth has very high protein content; protein is the most expensive and hardest to find part of a pig’s diet. If the farms could by the feed for a much cheaper price, it would help the pig farmers by reducing their spending on food for their pigs, so that they mite be able to focus more of their profits on their families.
Disadvantages:
1. It is possible that most of the people living in the Pasig River area that would be most benefited by a new livelihood would in fact be to poor to buy the molasses needed to make the pig feed.
2. The Pasig is an extremely polluted river, given the nature of the water hyacinth to extract nutrients from the water it lives in, it mite be hazardous to the health of the pig’s that it is being feed to.
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Possibility 2: Fish Food
Tilapia is considered a cash fish in many countries in around the world. The fish is some times raised in fish pens until it is of market able size. Tilapia has been known to feed on water hyacinth; Water hyacinths could be packaged and sold to fish farms in large or small quantities.
Advantages:
1. It would provide a cheap new organic fish food and help limit the growth of the water hyacinth in the Pasig. It would create an easy much needed livelihood for squatters if they took it upon them selves to attempt to make it into a business.
2. It would be an ideal trade for the people living near the Pasig considering that many of the fish farms are located in Manila bay which is where the river ends; boats could provide transportation that would carry the water hyacinth directly to its destination.
Disadvantages:
1. The water hyacinth is already a nuisance in many of the fish farms; some how live water hyacinth has gotten into the pens and multiplied, transporting it would risk the plant spreading more than it already has.
2. Fish farmers mite not want to buy the plant because it is not commonly used and it would mean changing old fish feeding habits that have been proven to work well.
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Possibility 3: Rope to be made into crafts or furniture (my action step)
Many of the countries around the world that have a large water hyacinth population have begun to make crafts and furniture out of the water hyacinth. If it can be done in other countries why can’t it be done here? I researched and made up a bulletin on how to make the water hyacinth rope that is used to make crafts and furniture. The reason I did not put how to make the crafts in the bulletin was simple, if you can learn how to make a rope out of a plant then you can learn how to make a basket out of one, the other reason that is probably more practical is there are already major companies that make the crafts and furniture but they are lacking the suppliers to harvest and make the plant suitable to work with, these companies would most likely be very interested in a cheap contract with our hard working local Filipinos.
A friend I and decided to go down to the Pasig with our bulletins and find out what people about the water hyacinth then tell them about the potential benefits it could have for them. We found out that the people in the area knew very little about the plant and some seemed interested by the possibilities the plant held while others did not seem to pay much attention to the information we presented to them.
Advantages:
1. If some of the people in Pasig decide to try making and marketing the hyacinth rope, and were successful many more would probably join in with them to gain a profitable job.
2. It is our duty as Christians and stewards of Gods good earth to use what ever we have to help the poor in any way we can including teaching them how to live a better life and make money which is even better then just giving them money. It could help break the bond of poverty over the community and give the people a more meaningful out look on life. At the same time it would help reduce the amount of water hyacinth in the river, thus reducing government spending on hyacinth reduction projects.
Disadvantages:
1. The sodium meta-bisulphate that is used in the treating process of the rope may be too expensive for the squatters or other poor people in the area to buy when they first start making the hyacinth rope.
2. The Pasig is so unclean that local people who are trying to retrieve the water hyacinth for rope making processes would be very vulnerable to sickness and bacteria floating in the water. This would not be as much of a problem if it were not for the state of their unsanitary living conditions. Another problem could be that it could be very hard to find buyers for the rope until the locals have already begun to produce it on a large scale.
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Bibliography
Ecological Economics Elsevier B.V. Volume 45, Issue 1 All rights reserved. ScienceDirect® is a registered trademark of Elsevier B.V. 2&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=3d8049d120bdcec961ff5a725251a4df
The Western Aquatic Plant Management Society. Eichhornia crassipes water hyacinth. http://www.wapms.org/plants/hyacinth.html
“Natural Resources Conservation Service” United States Department of Agriculture 2007. http://plants.usda.gov/java/ClassificationServlet?source=display&classid=Pontederiaceae
Tan, Ria. “Eichhornia crassipesKeladi Bunting (Malay)” Water hyacinth 2001. http://www.naturia.per.sg/buloh/plants/water_hyacinth.htm
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Mathur, Shailendra. “International Symposium on Air Quality and Waste Management for Agriculture”, 16-19 September 2007, Broomfield, Colorado 701P0907cd. http://asae.frymulti.com/abstract.asp?aid=23816&t=2
Nguyen Nhut Xuan Dung, Luu Huu Manh, Seishi Yamasaki. “Effects of Graded Levels of Ensiled Water Hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes, Mart.) with or without Molasses on Performance and Digestibility of Growing Pigs.” Department of Animal Husbandry, Faculty of Agriculture, Cantho University
Cantho, Vietnam, Japan International Research Center for Agriculture Sciences. http://www.ctu.edu.vn/institutes/mdi/jircas/JIRCAS/research/workshop/pro03/C6-Livestock.%206%20(Dr.%20Dung).pdf
Alchemy, Solutions. “DENR okays proposal of Fil-American group for Pasig River cleaning.” Manila Bulletin, 2001-2005. http://www.mb.com.ph/issues/2006/09/11/MAIN2006091174118.html
Anonymous Pilipino worker commuting on the Pasig River.
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