A free-floating, perennial, aquatic plant (family Pontederiaceae) that has thick, broad, ovate leaves and pink or lavender flowers. It reproduces by stolons and by seed, and the plant can double its population in two weeks. It is native to tropical South America and was brought to the 1884 World’s Fair in New Orleans as a gift, to be grown as an ornamental, and later cultivated in Rwanda. It is extremely invasive, choking waterways and killing fish, but also has medicinal and ecological uses and is edible.