Mini pond on new allotment - plant ID and advice please?

[buzzingtalk]

On my new allotment in London is a wishing well with a huge barrel dug into the ground - i quite like it as a feature and would like to keep it, however I know nothing about pond plants...can anyone ID this plant and tell me more about it? Does it look healthy? Also, what else can/should I grow in here, how much water does it need etc?

Thanks all!

[veggiechicken]

Its the time of year when pond plants are dying back so it probably is healthy, Maybe a water lily?

[Guest]

possibly frogbit, which can be mistaken for a lily but has a small yellow flower and it will grow to the size of the container.

Ignore me, it is more likely to be lily with the amount of leaves proud of the surface.

[buzzingtalk]

Lovely, cheers guys. I'll look those up in my plant books and try and get a definite ID, its nice to know where to start looking! It's certainly producing lots of new leaves as the old, bigger ones die back so I think its OK....going to try and collect some rainwater to top it up

[Martin H]

My guess would be that it (the big plant with the dead leaves) is a marsh marigold (Caltha palustris). It's quite happy in shallow water as well as just marshy ground.

[WendyC]

Agree with Martin. Marsh marigold- can't tell whether it is the single or double flowered one though! It's herbaceous, so yes, that's what they look like at thing time of year.

[buzzingtalk]

excellent - I'm going to try and get a proper ID based on leaf shape etc next time I'm there In any case, I'm going to cut back the old leaves, top up the water a bit...

If anyone has any recommendations of other plants that would suit this container, please let me know! I want to attract pollinators and frogs/toads if possible

[arpoet]

Talking about ponds reminded me that when we took over the allotment some years ago, it was very overgrown.
One of the first jobs i did was to clear some space for my runner bean trench.
I pulled up a sheet of muddy plastic only to discover that it must have been a pond and several mucky goldfish were busy splashing down the plot.
I rescued what i could and put em in the local duck pond.

[hamamelis]

If you want to attract wildlife, make sure there's a way for things to climb in and out- even froglets can drown if they can't get out of the water.

There looks to be a lot of dead plant matter for the amount of water- if I were you, I'd cut off all the dead stuff and stick it on the compost. If too much organic matter rots down in the water, it can pollute it, and you can wind up with algal sludge and mosquito larvae (they love stagnant water), but nothing much else. It might be a good idea to empty it out and refil it- a neglected tiny pond can fill up with gunk and just go stagnant very easily.

The plant you have visible there is an emergent (the leaves are above the water)- this won't really be adding oxygen to the water, so if you want frogs and toads to be able to use it, some pond weed would be a good plan. Someone will probably give you some if you ask round in spring, as it grows fast and will grow from a piece of stem. The flip side of this is that some non-native pond plants are highly invasive, so please don't dump spare bits in waterways.

[buzzingtalk]

Haha! I wonder how long they'd been there? Poor things.