Ecological surveys of biodiversity provide fundamental baseline information on species occurrence and the health of an ecosystem, but can require significant labor and taxonomic expertise to conduct. However, as the cost of high-throughput DNA sequencing has plummeted in recent years, DNA from environmental samples (eDNA) has emerged as a cost-effective source of biodiversity data. In research reported in a recent issue of Applications in Plant Sciences, Dr. Maria Kuzmina and colleagues at the University of Guelph show the feasibility of eDNA sequencing for identifying aquatic plant diversity.