ZANNICHELLIACEAE. 



Carpels distinct and separate. 

 Carpels united, or only 1. 



Flowers borne on a 1-sided spike. 



Flowers axillary. 



Fam. 1. ZANNICHELLIACEAE. 



Fam. 2. Zosteraceae. 

 Fam. 3. Cymodoceaceae. 



Family 1. ZANNICHELLIACEAE Dumort. 



PoNDWEED Family. 



Perennial plants, the foliage mostly submerged. Leaves very narrow 

 or filiform. Flowers monoecious or perfect, small, and inconspicuous. 

 Perianth none. Stamens 1-4, with extrorse anthers. Carpels 1-seeded. 

 Fruit drupe-like. Endosperm none. Four genera and sixty or more 

 species, mostly inhabiting fresh water, but the only Bermuda representa- 

 tive lives in brackish pools 



1. RUPPIA L. 



Slender, widely branched aquatics with capillary stems, slender alternate 

 1-nerved leaves tapering to an acuminate apex, and with membranous sheaths. 

 Flow^ers on a capillary peduncle, naked, consisting of 2 sessile anthers, each 

 wath 2 large separate sacs attached by their backs, having between them sev- 

 eral pistillate flowers in 2 sets on opposite sides of the rachis, the whole cluster 

 at first enclosed in the sheathing base of the leaf. Stigmas sessile, peltate. 

 Fruit small obliquely-pointed drupelets, several in each cluster and stipitate. 

 [Name in honor of Heinrich Bernhard Eupp, a German botanist.] In the 

 development of the plants the staminate flowers drop off and the peduncle 

 elongates, bearing the pistillate flowers in 2 clusters at the end, but after 

 fertilization it coils up and the fruit is drawn below the surface of the water. 

 Three or four species, widely 

 distributed in salt and brack- 

 ish water, the following typ- 

 ical. 



1. Ruppia maritima L. 

 Maritime Euppia. (Fig. 2.) 

 Stems usually whitish, often 

 3° long, the internodes ir- 

 regular, naked. Leaves 1- 

 3^' long, f" or less wdcle; 

 sheaths with a short free tip ; 

 peduncles in fruit sometimes 

 1° long; stipes 4-6 in a 

 cluster, Y-l¥ long; fruits 

 with a dark hard shell, ovoid, 

 about 1" long, often oblique 

 or gibbous at the base, point- 

 ed with the long style, but 

 varying much in shape. 

 [B. maritima longipes Hag- 

 strom.] 



Brackish pools. Native. 

 Nearly cosmopolitan in brack- 

 ish water. It probably reached 

 Bermuda by ocean currents. It 

 is commonly known as Ditch- 

 grass. 



