Water hyacinth might
not be bad for our environment!I have found an answer for this water monster,We can now say Oyee while putting our hands up!!
Water hyacinth are a free-floating perennial aquatic plant,
it used to be a native to tropical and
sub-tropical South America, but today it is
an immigrant to our East African lakes and rivers. With broad, thick,
glossy, ovate leaves, water hyacinth may rise above the surface of the water as
much as 1 meter in height. The leaves of this uninvited immigrant, are
10–20 cm across, and float above the water surface. They have long, spongy
and bulbous stalks. The feathery, freely hanging roots are purple-black. An
erect stalk supports a single spike of 8-15 conspicuously attractive flowers,
mostly lavender to pink in color with six petals. When not in bloom, water
hyacinth may be mistaken for frog's-bit(Limnobium spongia).
Today when you visit the landing sites of Lake Victoria, you
will be shocked to see this monster eating away our pretty lake shores!
Though a lot of efforts have been put in, so as to stop the spread
of this water plant, its fate is not yet been over come. I have heard of tales
such as government/s establishing projects such as breeding insects which will
eat this water plant and another which is removing this plant by a certain type
of ferry which later crashes it into some sort of manure, etc.
But during my recent tour to
some of the I islands on lake
Victoria, I was astonished to find something interesting, that Pigs(Swine) can
feast on this water parasite and believe
me, it only takes some few minutes for a mature pig to eat some many kilograms
of this water weed. Now may be water
hyacinth came as a blessing in disguise!
In East Africa today, Pig farming
is becoming a very big business and many of pig farmers are in short of pig
food, then, why not to establish a
project where by we can harvest the water hyacinth for our pigs food?
