BROAD-LEAVED ARROW-HEAD 



Sagittaria latifolia Willd. 

 WATER-PLANTAIN FAMILY 



A handsome plant is the Arrow-head with distinctive and 

 decorative leaves and flowers. Growing in shallow water or mud, 

 along the margins of ponds and streams, it occurs commonly 

 and often abundantly throughout most of the North American 

 continent. Since aquatic plants are subject to sudden changes 

 in their surrounding conditions floods may increase the current 

 of the streams and raise the water in the ponds, or drought may 

 dry up both it is not strange to find that this plant exhibits great 

 variation in size and form. Its height may be six inches or two feet. 

 Its leaves may be broad or narrow, but, unless submerged during 

 growth, they retain their arrow-head shape. The plants are 

 occasionally dioecious but usually monoecious, that is, bearing 

 both male and female flowers on the same plant but separately. 

 As may be seen by referring to the picture opposite, both kinds 

 grow in clusters of three around the common flower-stalk. Both- 

 kinds also have three glistening white petals more delicate 

 than the most gauzy fabric ever spun by man. But in the centre 

 of the male flower is a beautiful cluster of golden stamens, while 

 in the female flower is a dull green, rounded mass of pistils. 



The superior beauty of the male over the female blossom, 

 although not fully apparent in our picture, is quite pronounced, 

 and follows a general rule among plants. Many other examples 

 of this might be mentioned for instance, the long drooping 

 male tassels of the birch and alder as compared with their small 

 inconspicuous female catkins, or the golden dress of the male 

 willow as compared with the quieter silver of the female. Again, 

 in the case of the cultivated squash or pumpkin, both sexes have 

 great orange-yellow trumpets, but the female, close-seated upon 

 the embryo fruit, is partly hidden by the leaves, while the male 

 rises up on a long stalk to better display his splendor. Yet these 

 decorative distinctions of male and female dress and form are 

 not motived by anything corresponding to human vanity; rather 

 they spring from vital necessities in the life, not of the individual, 

 but of the species. 



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