Botanical atlas
Water Pygmyweed
Tillaea aquatica
This plant is kept in the atlas for identification and safety, not for use. Read the safety notes below before handling it, and keep it away from children, cats, and food.
Water pygmyweed is one of those small, unassuming plants that never found its way into the apothecary shelf. There is no meaningful record of it being brewed, poulticed, or eaten by any tradition of folk medicine, so nothing here should be read as a health claim. What it has earned instead is a quieter kind of respect among naturalists and botanists, who prize it as a tiny, easily overlooked marker of healthy wetland edges. Its real story is one of taxonomy and habitat rather than healing, having been shuffled between the genus Tillaea and Crassula over the centuries as botanists worked out exactly where it belonged in the succulent family tree.
Safety.
Water pygmyweed has no history of food or medicinal use and should not be eaten; it can also be confused with the invasive New Zealand pigmyweed.
Our sister app HerbLens identifies water pygmyweed from a photo and keeps its full botanical portrait: growing guide, harvest notes, and look-alike warnings.
View on HerbLensHerbSense shares traditional herbal knowledge for education, not diagnosis or treatment. Herbs can interact with medicines and conditions. Speak with your doctor before acting on anything here, and seek care promptly for anything severe, sudden, or worsening.