PlantFiles: Water Celery, Water Parsley, Water Dropwort
Oenanthe javanica 'Flamingo'

It's edible. It does spread like crazy, but we just rip out what we don't want.

Yes, it does spread quickly. But it's beautiful around and in my pond and the goldfish love it.

While beautiful, this form of water celery is highly invasive! In 2000 I purchased a small 6" pot of this from a local water garden center. It had zone 6 noted (erroneously) on the indicator card, therefore I believed it would probably not overwinter in my area, but the leaves were so beautiful (pink & white tinged) that I felt it was worth having, if only for one year.

Not only did this little monster overwinter, it spread out (before I knew what it was doing) and worked it's runners into the rocks on the east side of my pond. The next spring, suddenly, not only was it spilling out of the pot in the pond, it was springing up on the bank amid the rocks as well - and the runners were criss-crossing my pond. By late summer I had runners all over the east end of my pond in the water, through the rocks, etc. I began pulling these and trying to control the plant to no avail.

By 2003 the plant had now sprung up on the south side of the pond and began spreading it's runners out into the pond in search of its next area.... I spend a good deal of time pulling runners on a weekly basis now. I have even noted that "new plants" have even started to invade my garden, which is uphill from the pond 6 feet. It is impossible to eradicate this plant by pulling the runners - it's too aggressive and has now gotten a good enough hold in the rocks that it is hopeless to try to dig out. You can control it to some extent that way, but I fear I'll never get rid of it entirely, and I can't use chemicals because of the proximity to the pond.

Zone 6? Ha!!! It lived through the winter 2003 here imbedded in the rocks and we had week-long exposures to temps in the -20/-25 area! I did a massive "search and destroy" weeding spurt in mid June 2004, but of course you cannot get it all! As you can see from my pictures taken in October 2004 -- "it's baaaack!"

Beware this little beauty unless you want a plant to take over your pond/bog area - because it will!