Definition of "duckweed" [duck•weed]

• Any of various small, free-floating, stemless aquatic flowering plants of the genus Lemna, growing in close, often carpetlike colonies on the surface of quiet water. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "This company's workhorse is lemna, also known as duckweed-a tiny, aquatic clonal plant that doubles its biomass every 36 hours-and is skilled at making proteins that mammalian cells struggle, and often fail, to produce."
• "Rivers and lakes are filled with small-flowered a kind of duckweed [Lemnaceae] and the lake started to bloom."
• "PetroAlgae is attempting to commercialize an open pond "microcrop" technology (they are working with other small aquatic plants such as duckweed as well as algae.)"