I Got Duckweed!

(Picture January 26, 2018)

Last January 20, 2018, my college friends and I went on a road trip.

Destination: Bulacan, to the house and chicken farms of one of our friend, Mr. Edsel Escudero.

But this is not about the road trip, nor the farm.  This is about what I found from one of his farms, DUCKWEEDS!

I remember when I was a kid that duckweeds grew abundant in a stream near our house, the stream is still there, but the duckweeds were no more.  And I have been looking for this for quite some time now (well, since I learned about Azolla actually).  Because, before, when I search online about Azolla, some pictures that I saw were that of the duckweeds.

Both the Azolla and the duckweed grows on water, on the surface of the water, maybe that is why some people show duckweed pictures instead of Azolla.

My friend Edzel has a pond in one of his farms.  He said that the previous owner of the property was going to make it a vacation house, and he had that pond dug because he wanted to construct a swimming pool, but unfortunately for him, he got into some financial problems and he had to let go of that property. 

Back to the pond.  I remember Edsel asked me before if he can grow Azolla in that pond, that was when he saw my Azolla Project blog. But he did not show me a picture of the pond then, so I did not know that he had duckweeds in it.

While he was giving us a tour inside one of the buildings of his layer chickens (it was an elevated building), I saw the pond, and the water was covered in green, and my eyes twinkled because I knew at once what that green thing was. DUCKWEEDS!

(I was looking for the picture from that vantage point inside the building, but unfortunately, I do not have it.  Probably got too excited to go down and forgot to take the picture)

I asked him to go down the pond to take a closer look, he said that they call it ‘Lumot’, and I told him that those are duckweeds, and it is just like Azolla.

I took some of it home.

And that is how I got my duckweeds.

As of writing date (May 02, 2018), I have yet to study it, but I am using the same style I use to grow my Azolla, I just noticed that they grow a lot faster than Azolla.  More on that in my next post.