Another way of soil building: plants that aerate soil

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Another interesting property like nitrogen fixation that we could breed for.

As you probably know plants cannot grow in water because they need their root aerated. Some plants evolved around this problem by having air canals that take air from stem or branches and then transporting this into root, but as everything is not perfect and some part of air is released into soil.

Most famous plants that can grow in water are rice, wapato, taro, alder.

Now the interesting part some plants in some books/papers show potential like wheat, sweat potato. (maybe more)

Now what’s usefulness of this property?

  • for fire prevention we could convert some wheat field into swampy barriers that still grow food
  • better yields in poorly aerated soils like clay
  • potential for plants to grow deeper roots than normally
  • better absorption of water soluble fertilizer (in sealed containers almost perfect)
  • growing in water (for example in containers on terrible soil)
  • soil building

Issue with property is lower tolerance for drought.

Imho it worth noting if you notice this property in your plants.

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To build on what you’ve said, here are the Latin names of the plants you mentioned:

Rice (Oryza sativa)
Wapato / arrowhead / katniss (Sagittaria latifolia)
Taro (Colocasia esculenta)
Alder (Aldus sp)

I would also like to add a few suggestions:

Cattail (Typha sp)
Sweet flag (Acorus sp)
River bulrush (Bolboschoenus fluviatilis)
Kang kong / water spinach (Ipomoea aquatica)
Flowering rush (Butomus umbellatus)

There are also these three, but you need to be careful with them, because they’re in the Apiaceae family and very easy to confuse with water hemlock:

Skirret (Sium sisarum)
Water parsnip (Sium suave)
Cherokee swamp potato / cowbane (Oxypolis rigidior)

All of those things could be grown in a swamp. Or in a river. Or in a pot without drainage holes, which is how I’m planning to grow them. :wink:

That’s another advantage of aquatic plants: they can be grown in a pot without drainage holes. In an arid climate, pots tend to go dry really quickly, but if there are no drainage holes and there is lots of soil on top to prevent water from evaporating from the surface, a pot can keep in quite a lot of water. Water features aren’t great for arid climates, but a pot without drainage holes could be a sustainable way to grow plants that want a lot of water and don’t mind wet feet.

I’ve heard that Sugarcane (Saccharum sp) can be very flood tolerant and doesn’t mind marshy soil conditions for a few weeks, by the way, even though that’s not its preference. So that’s another species worth keeping in mind.

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