32 YELLOW-EYED GEASS FAMILY 



has a spathe that is prolonged in a slender lash two to 

 eight inches in length, and a large leaf cut into several 

 large leaflets — usually five to eleven. The fruit is a 

 cluster of red berries. 



Water Lettuce (Pistia Stratiotes) 



Eosettes of thick, light green, broadly wedge-shaped 

 leaves float on lakes and sluggish streams. This plant, 

 the water lettuce, is related to the spoonflowers and other 

 arums, but is very different in appearance. The leaves, 

 two to five inches long, are strongly ribbed beneath, and 

 from their axils inconspicuous flowers are borne on a 

 small spadix whose whitish spathe is only about half an 

 inch long. 



Golden-Club (Orontium aquaticum) 



The golden-club blooms from late winter to summer in 

 swamps and shallow water, bearing a finger-like inflo- 

 rescence several inches long at the summit of a flowering- 

 stem one to two feet in length. This "golden club" is 

 thickly covered with minute yellow flowers, but the spathe 

 below them is bractlike, and soon falls. The dark green 

 oblong leaves are often more than a foot in length, and 

 have a handsome luster. 



YELLOW-EYED GEASS FAMILY (Xyridaceae) 



Herbaceous plants with grasslike leaves. Flowers small, yel- 

 low or white, in short, compact, scaly spike terminating the 

 leafless flowering-stem. Fruit a tiny capsule. 



Yellow-Eyed Grass. Hard-Head (Genus Xyris) 



Plants of this genus are common in low pinelands and 

 marshes, and near lakes and swamps, where the hard, scaly 



