The alliance Nymphaeion albae includes vegetation dominated by large dicot aquatic macrophytes which are rooted in the bottom and have leaf rosettes or individual leaves floating on the water surface. Most of the dominant species have large insect-pollinated flowers. This vegetation occurs in shallow water bodies with oligo-mesotrophic to eutrophic, still or slow-moving water in temperate and boreal zones. In the succession series of aquatic macrophyte vegetation, it replaces vegetation of submerged macrophytes, and its large biomass production contributes to rapid terrestrialization.