I'm not sure that bulbous plants are the greatest for filtering the water. Do you know what her goal for the use of this water is? There are a lot of great water plants that would do well in her area that are very good at cleaning the water. I think we would need to know what her conditions are and what she wants to achieve before we could recommend plants for her. Randy On Fri, Nov 11, 2011 at 9:22 PM, Lee Poulsen <wpoulsen@pacbell.net> wrote: > I recently received a Facebook email from someone I don't know who found > me while perusing the PBS wiki. (I live close to her, so she contacted me.) > She doesn't belong to the list (and didn't even know what it was) so I told > her I would ask and see what all the experts here might suggest. Here is > her question: > > "We are putting in a grey water system and we want a reed bed to filter > the water. However, I don't want invasive reeds in my garden and I read > that another choice might be Crinum Lillies i.e. Hymenocallis Occidentalis, > Crinum Americanum as well as a couple of Iris species. As an expert, I > wonder if you know where to buy any of these plants?" > > First I told her I wasn't an expert. ;-) > Then I mentioned that there are probably a lot more choices of Crinums, > Hymenocallis, and both Iris species as well as Iris hybrids (such as the > Louisiana and Japanese Iris hybrids and relatives) that she might really > like to try. > > I have no clue as to which are good water filtering plants however. Or if > there are other genera that might be good for this, including non-bulbous > plants, that also aren't invasive. I'm hoping that there are some good > plants that are both good at filtering water AND have amazing flowers, etc. > She lives on the side of one of the hills near downtown L.A. which has an > extremely mild climate (virtually never reaches 0°C and rarely gets very > hot either). > > Any ideas from the experts out there? > --Lee Poulsen > Pasadena, California, USA - USDA Zone 10a > Latitude 34°N, Altitude 1150 ft/350 m > > _______________________________________________ > pbs mailing list > pbs@lists.ibiblio.org > http://pacificbulbsociety.org/list.php > http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/ > -- * * A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right. - Thomas Paine --- * *