5S 
Marsileacesee Water Clover Family. 
Herbaceous amphibious perennials from slender creeping rhizomes and 
<—--+p bearing long-petioled usually 4-foliolate leaves. Sori borne at 
the ground level within bony, ovoid, 2-loculed pedunculate sporocarps, the 
sporocarps, arising from the rhigome near the base of the petioles or upon 
them, Spores of two kinds, numerous microspores in microsporangia liberated 
by dehiscence of the sporocarp, and solitary megaspores, in the few 
megasporangia likewise exposed in sori at dehiscence of the sporocarp,. In 
general the microspores give rise to antheridial gametophytes, the megaspores, 
to archegonial gametophytese 
|. Marsilea Le Water Clovere 
Somewhat tufted low clover-like plantse Sporocarps ovoid, the 2 locules 
with many transverse partitions, on dehiscence producing a mucilaginous 
soriferous film of tissue, the sori more or less embedded in membranous 
enve lopeSe 
1. Me vestita Hook. & Greve. Rhizomes silky-hairy at the nodes, the leaves 
varying on the same plant, 5-20 cm. long, with slender hairy but ultimately 
glabrescent petioles, the leaflets sessile, cuneate-obovate, entire, glabrate 
in age, 5-12 mm, long; peduncles short, rather stout; sporocarps solitary, 
flattened-subglobose, 3-6 mm, broad, hirsute when immature, less hairy in agée 
In heavy to sandy soils of drying pools and roadside ditches, often 
locally abundant, of variable size, the non-fruiting taller plants in 
deeper water, those forming sporocarps vhere the water has recedede 
