An aerobic, yellow-pigmented, Gram-negative bacterium, designated strain S13T, was isolated from freshwater sediment of Taihu Lake in central China. The taxonomy of strain S13T was studied by using phenotypic and phylogenetic methods. Cells of strain S13T were rod-shaped, non-motile and with a size range of 0.35-0.55x1.5-2.5 microm. The nearly complete 16S rRNA gene of strain S13T was amplified and sequenced. A blast search and phylogenetic analysis based on 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity showed that strain S13T was related to members of the genus Flavobacterium, with the highest sequence similarity of 93.8% to Flavobacterium columnare (ATCC 23463T). Cells contained menaquinone-6 (MK-6) as the major respiratory quinone and the genomic DNA G+C content was 41 mol%. The major fatty acids were iso-C15:0 (28.2%) and iso-C17:1omega9c (19.0%). It is proposed that S13T (=CGMCC 1.3801T=JCM 13331T) represents the type strain of a novel species, Flavobacterium saliperosum sp. nov.