{"id":15624,"date":"2023-10-08T07:16:52","date_gmt":"2023-10-08T01:46:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=15624"},"modified":"2025-04-03T18:39:21","modified_gmt":"2025-04-03T13:09:21","slug":"what-is-watermeal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/what-is-watermeal\/","title":{"rendered":"What is Watermeal?"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><strong>About Watermeal<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Watermeal is an <strong>aquatic plant in the Araceae family.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>It is the <strong>smallest flowering plant in the world<\/strong> and <strong>appears assmall green seeds.\u00a0<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>It is often <strong>referred to as &#8220;duckweed<\/strong>&#8221; because it is a <strong>favorite food of ducks.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3><strong>Distribution<\/strong><\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>It flourishes in <strong>temperate, sub-tropical, and tropical locations<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>They grow on the <strong>surface of lakes, ponds, and marshes<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3><strong>Features<\/strong><\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>It is a <strong>very tiny (less than 1 millimeter<\/strong>) light <strong>green, free-floating, rootless plant<\/strong>.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>It is <strong>branchless <\/strong>and also has <strong>no leaves.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>It consists of a <strong>single, oval, or spherical frond<\/strong> that floats on the surface of still or slow-moving water bodies.<\/li>\n<li>It also <strong>produces the world\u2019s smallest fruit, called a utricle.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>It is a <strong>nutritional powerhouse<\/strong>. It is a complete protein, meaning that it <strong>contains all nine essential amino acids.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>In some cases, <strong>watermeal can become invasive<\/strong> and form dense mats that cover the entire surface of a water body.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<h3>Q1: What is an invasive species?<\/h3>\n<p>An invasive species is an organism that is not indigenous, or native, to a particular area. Invasive species can cause great economic and environmental harm to the new area.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Source:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/pbs.twimg.com\/media\/DOm7kCRX0AUw8Y1.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><u>Earth&#8217;s smallest flowering plant may become food, oxygen source for astronauts<\/u><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Watermeal is an aquatic plant in the Araceae family.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":15625,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-15624","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","8":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15624\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}