Word: auriculata
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Dates: during 1961-1961
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...would create a lake 175 miles long where protein-starved black Rhodesians could catch fish and white Rhodesians could swim and sail. But Kariba Lake had hardly begun to fill with water when a vicious enemy showed its deceptively pretty face. A delicate, floating water fern named Salvinia auriculata appeared in patches that spread with astonishing speed. By last week dense mats, some of them strong enough to support a man, covered 15% of the lake, and local scientists were in a dither. Professor Boris I. Balinsky of Johannesburg's University of the Witwatersrand warned that Salvinia might turn...
...Salvinia auriculata is a native of tropical America, and no one knows for sure how it got to Africa. One theory is that a 19th century missionary imported it to ornament a pond. The fern's hairy, half-inch-long leaves grow in pairs on a slender stem. Each broken-off bit of stem can start a new colony. Great islands of weed drift around Kariba Lake, entangling boats and clogging harbors. Fishery experts had been counting on Kariba to support an important fishing industry, as other African lakes do, but under Salvinia's thick floating mats...
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