In 1975, at NASA's John C. Stennis Space Center (SSC), in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, an experiment in water cleansing was conducted by planting water hyacinth on seven acres of the town's foul sewage lagoon. The hyacinths which flourished on such a rich source of nutrients must have been bulls indeed, as they overcame the toxic waste and an attractive blanket of glossy green plants and blue flowers over clean water was the result. Their dynamic, pervasive root systems were found to extract even lethal heavy metals from the water.

When the success of the experiment was published, communities across the U.S. built wastewater treatment facilities utilizing the greedy water hyacinth: a Texas town of 2,000, the two million residents of San Diego, and Disney World's Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow (EPCOT) are but three examples. San Diego composts the plants and then uses the material as fertilizer: a practice also followed in developing nations such as Bangladesh.

Bull Hyacinths Eaten by Cows: Film at 11!
The SSC also cooperated with the Louisiana State University's Agricultural Experiment Station; sun-dried, chopped water hyacinth plants were fed to dairy cows for four weeks. Researchers learned that the milk produced was of the same quantity and quality as when the cows were fed their typical diet of hay. Those Bangladeshi farmers feed water hyacinth to their pigs when land for forage is scarce; so, too, if acreage for animal feed becomes scarce in the U.S., and the land needed to grow human foods, the SSC-LSU study shows that the rampantly abundant water hyacinth could actually become a hero.

Water hyacinth: beautiful/horrible, villain/hero, plague/redeemer, whatever role it plays, it's definitely here to stay. Just please, don't do anything more to spread it, or any other exotic. When you travel, educate yourself first and don't smuggle even the prettiest specimens back home. Chances are, they are already here.

References:
Hammer, Roger L. Everglades Wildflowers. 2002. Helena, Montana. Falcon Press.
Hoyer, Mark V. et. al. Florida Freshwater Plants. 1996. Gainesville, Florida. University of Florida, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences.
Schmidt, James C., James R. Kannenberg, eds. How to Identify and Control Water Weeds and Algae. 1976. Germantown, Wisconsin. Applied Biochemists.
Tarver, David P. et. al. Aquatic and Wetland Plants of Florida. 1979. Tallahassee, Florida. Bureau of Aquatic Plant Research and Control, Florida Department of Natural Resources.

http://floridafisheries.com/docum/pond-bro.html#plants (referenced on December 30, 2008)
http://plants.ifas.ufl.edu/guide/intrguid.html (referenced on December 28, 2008)
http://plants.ifas.ufl.edu/guide/biocons.html#hyacinbio (referenced on December 28, 2008)
http://plants.ifas.ufl.edu/guide/sup1herb.html (referenced on December 30, 2008)
http://technology.ssc.nasa.gov/suc_stennis_water.html (referenced on December 31, 2008)
http://journeytoforever.org/edu_pond.html (referenced on December 23, 2008)
http://myfwc.com/nonnatives/InvasivePlants/HistoryofManagement.htm (referenced on December 23, 2008)
http://www.fapms.org/ (website of the Florida Aquatic Plant Management Society, referenced on December 28, 2008)