Rootless Duckweed
Rootless Duckweed
Water & Wetland Plant
The world's smallest flowering plant — a rootless green speck, smaller than a pinhead, that floats on ponds.
💡 Fun Facts
- It is the smallest flowering plant in the world — a whole plant is less than a millimetre across!
- It has no roots at all and simply floats on top of the water.
- It makes the world's smallest fruit, too.
📅 Through the Year
- Dormant:November to March
Name Story
Wolffia arrhiza
means “Wolff's rootless duckweed”
What does its name mean?
- Wolffia — Wolff’s plantnamed after Johann Wolff, a German botanist who studied duckweeds
- arrhiza — rootlessGreek a- ‘without’ + rhiza ‘root’
The first word isn’t a description at all — it simply honours Johann Wolff, a German botanist who studied duckweeds, so there is no hidden meaning to unpick. The second word, ‘rootless’, is the clever part: this is the only duckweed with no roots whatsoever, and it is also the smallest flowering plant in the world.