Frogbit
Frogbit
Water & Wetland Plant
A tiny, free-floating plant that looks like a miniature water-lily — kidney-shaped leaves and small white flowers drifting on still water.
💡 Fun Facts
- Frogbit looks like a tiny water-lily, but it floats free on the surface instead of rooting in the mud.
- Its little leaves grow in rosettes, each one shaped like a small kidney, with a pretty white three-petalled flower.
- In autumn it makes special buds that sink to the bottom to spend the winter, then float back up and sprout again in spring.
📅 Through the Year
- Flowering:July to August
Name Story
Hydrocharis morsus-ranae
means “water-grace, a frog’s bite”
a traditional story‘A frog’s bite’ is an old nickname people gave the plant long ago.
What does its name mean?
- Hydrocharis — water-graceGreek hydor ‘water’ + charis ‘grace’
- morsus-ranae — a frog’s biteLatin morsus ‘a bite’ + ranae ‘of a frog’
A graceful little plant that floats on still, quiet water. Its odd second name, ‘a frog’s bite’, is an old nickname — perhaps for its small rounded leaves that look as though a frog has nibbled them.