Note for users
The state of Mississippi has extensive inland and coastal wetlands and contains one of the most well-preserved, unmodified river basins of the U.S., the Pascagoula River Basin. Nevertheless, there are few aquatic plant websites that address and discuss exclusively the Mississippi aquatic plants. This website was developed based on field surveys conducted spring 2007 through spring 2009. The field surveys were conducted in various areas along the Mississippi Coast, including Pascagoula River, Pearl River, Grand Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve & Refuge, Belle Fontaine Beach, Biloxi Bay, beaches and wetland areas along Gulfport, Biloxi, Ocean Springs, and Pascagoula, and Moss Point.
In order to minimize overlaps with other existing plant guide resource, the original plan for this website was to include only obligate wetland vascular plants that require persistent standing waters to survive, thrive, and reproduce and that strictly occur in Mississippi coastal areas. While the criteria have been kept when selecting plants for this website, a few exceptions were allowed to include: Ricciacarpus natans, a Bryophyte that grows on the water surface; species within a genus (i.e. Eleocharis, Juncus) that contains both aquatic and facultative wetland species; and seagrasses that have been recorded in previous studies, but are lost or reduced significantly in Mississippi (i.e. Syringodium, Halophila, and Thalassia).
Aquatic Plants
Aquatic plants, also called hydrophytes, are the plants adapted to live in aquatic environments. They can occur in a range of growing forms: free-floating on the water surface, rooted with floating leaves, completely submerged, or emergent with roots in standing water or permanently water logged soil. Various aquatic plant habitats can be reviewed here.
The project was supported in part by funding from:
The National Sea Grant College Program of the U.S. Department
of Commerce’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration under NOAA Grant NA06OAR417007 and the Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant Consortium and Auburn
University Marine Extension and Research Center. Center for University Scholars,
Jackson State University
Dauphin Island Sea Lab (DISL) and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
(NOAA) Coastal Services Center
in support of the Gulf of Mexico Alliance.
The views expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the views of any of the above organizations.
Contributors
| Project manager, Photographer, and Editor | Hyun Jung Cho |
| Technical Editors | Patrick
Biber John D. Caldwell |
| Technical Reviewers and Field Guides | James
T. Blocker Jennifer Buchanan Jeff Clark Jay McIlwain Robert Mohlenbrock Michael Poirrier Melissa Schneider |
| Website Host | Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant Consortium |
| Website Creator | Dmitri Sobolev |
| Website Maintenance | John Grigsby |
| JSU Student Assistants |
Harene Natarajan |
| High School Student Assistant |
Annie Lu |
Contact Information
Hyun Jung (“J.”) Cho
Department of Biology
Jackson State University
1400 Lynch St.
Jackson, MS 39217
Ph) 601-979-3912
Fax) 601-979-5853
Email) hyun_jung.cho@jsums.edu