Bog Bean is an aquatic or bog plant, which is a perennial that loses it's leaves in winter and grows from rhizomes that often forms rafts of floating mats at the edges of pools of water. The flowers have five white feathery petals that have a pinkish tinge on the underside and have long styles and some short, which assist in cross-pollination. The leaves have three waxy upright lobes that resemble those of the Bean plant.
Widely distributed in the U.K. but more common in the south and less so in the north.
Found at the edges of bogs, fens, marsh, rivers and lochs where it forms floating mats of rhizomes or creeps through marshland.
The leaves can be used to make tea to strengthen stomachs and the plant was used to treat tuberculosis, heart problems and asthma.
The leaves were once used as a flavouring in beer making, hence the name Bog Hop. The rhizomes are used medicinally in Ireland.
