This vegetation type is dominated by Stratiotes aloides, whose rosettes of serrate leaves float on the water surface in late spring and summer. In autumn they sink to the bottom where they overwinter. Stratiotetum aloidis occurs in water bodies in an advanced stage of terrestrialization, with mesotrophic to naturally eutrophic, still or slow-moving water. It used to be a typical vegetation type of oxbows; now it is found in restored alluvial pools and channels in the floodplain of the lower Dyje river in southern Moravia. Here the population of Stratiotes aloides is native, but it declined in the past and was locally re-introduced from material of regional origin. Other localities in the Czech Republic originated from introductions of plant material of unknown origin.