GAMOPETAL.E 333 



The habitat is ponds, pools, channels, marshes, 

 ditches. It is found in the reed swamp near the 

 margin. Here it is associated with sedges and rushes, 

 etc. 



The plant is aquatic and has the rosette habit, with 

 radical tufts of leaves. The whole plant is smooth 

 and yellowish-green. The inflorescence, however, is 

 glandular. The rootstock is creeping, the branches 

 succulent, radiating from the scape, leafy and 

 whorled, submerged, floating, and rooting. The joints 

 are not swollen. The leaves are alternate, deeply 

 divided nearly to the base, with slender segments 

 narrow to linear, acute, pectinate. 



The flowering stem arises from the middle of a 

 whorl of branches, and is long, erect, cylindrical, 

 leafless, with distant whorls of three to five flowers, 

 on stalks bent down in fruit, with linear bracts. 

 The flowers are lilac, or pale pink, with a yellow base. 

 The calyx-lobes are linear, the calyx being five-cleft. 

 The corolla has a straight tube with blunt lobes, 

 shorter than the calyx, or very little longer, with a 

 broad five-lobed limb. The style projects, the stamens 

 are inserted on the tube, and the anthers and their 

 stalks are nearly equal. In other cases the style is 

 shorter and the stamens are inserted at the top of the 

 tube, and the anther-stalks are three or four times 

 as long as the anthers. 



The capsule is five-valved, and contains many 

 angled seeds, with the hilum at the base. 



The flowers are in bloom between May and July. 



