Encyclopedia - Plants for ponds

Sweet flag

Acorus

Family Acoraceae. Perennial shallow-water plants. They occur throughout the Northern Hemisphere, from the European subarctic and Atlantic North America to the islands of Southeast Asia.

Plants with thick horizontal rhizomes, forming dense clumps. Linear leaves are gathered in tufts. The flowering stem is short and flat, bearing at the top a thick inconspicuous inflorescence of small greenish-yellow flowers - a spadix. The inflorescence is covered by a long leaf similar to the others but shorter, which appears to be a continuation of the stem. Hardiness depends on species and cultivar.

Location: requires open, sunny sites.

Soil: the most suitable spot is the wettest area of the garden, with humus-rich, light silty soil. When digging, remove weeds thoroughly, especially those spreading by root suckers, and add 3–4 buckets of compost or peat per 1 m2.

Care: consists of timely weeding and watering. Once the plant is established, despite its "marsh origin", it can easily go without watering for 2–3 weeks. Weeds should be pulled out regularly, otherwise in about two years it will be very difficult to extract them from under the expanding rhizomes of sweet flag. The grassy sweet flag is taken indoors for the winter to a conservatory, unheated greenhouse, or cellar. It can successfully overwinter in the open ground only in the south. In the temperate zone in especially cold winters it may die back, although sometimes it grows and overwinters for several years.

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