Flowers are rarely produced and measure about 1 mm in diameter, with a cup-shaped membranous scale containing a single ovule and two stamens.

The small free floating plants are susceptible to being blown into heaps which results in open water surface allowing algal growth.

To maintain a dense cover of plants on the water surface and prevent a too thick layer for growth, coordinated harvesting and replenishment of nutrients are required.

[9] Lemna minor has been shown to remove heavy metals like lead, copper, zinc and arsenic very efficiently from waters with non-lethal concentrations.

[12] Because L. minor is temperature tolerant, shows rapid growth and is easy to harvest, it bears high potential for the cost-efficient use in wastewater treatments.

[9][13] In industrial affected regions, where heavy metals accumulate in waters, soils and sediments due to anthropogenic activities like mining and burning of fossil fuels, the harvested L. minor should not be reused, but disposed accordingly.

[13][14][15] Because heavy metals have carcinogenic effects in humans,[16] persist long in nature and accumulate in living organisms, their removal from the environment is important.

[21] An investigation showed, that the expensive sesame oil cakes in chicken diets could partially be replaced by cheap L. minor with increased growth performance of broiler.

Nevertheless, because of a lower content of digestible proteins in L. minor (68.9% compared to 89.9% in sesame oil cake), common duckweed could only be used as a food supplement in broiler diets.

[20] Growing selected geographic isolates of L. minor on diluted swine lagoon liquid in North Carolina resulted in yields up to 28.5 g m−2 day−1 (104.03 t ha−1 y−1) and removal of over 85% of the total contained nitrogen and phosphorus.

[8][24] Cultivating L. minor in anaerobic pretreated wastewater is a low cost application, with the potential to improve domestic manure by producing valuable animal feed.

Due to its low cellulose content (approximately 10%) compared to terrestrial plants, the conversion procedure of the starch to ethanol is relatively easy.

Under ideal conditions in terms of phosphate, nitrate and sugar availability and optimal pH, the proportion of starch to total dry weight is slightly higher (12.5%).

[30] Lemna minor is commonly used for the ecotoxicity assessment of organic and inorganic micropollutants[31] as well as for evaluating the toxicity of wastewater and landfill leachates.