ELEVEN IMPORTANT WILD-DUCK FOODS. 



25 



DESCRIPTION OF PLANT. 



The stems of coontail (Ceratophyllum demersum) are thickly 

 clothed with round, dense masses of foliage (figs. 21 and 22), which in 

 shape amply justify the common name 

 so widely used in the South, and which 

 is here adopted for the plant. Coontail 

 is a submerged plant, but only excep- 

 tionally is it attached to the bottom, as 

 it has no roots ; it usually grows in rather 

 quiet waters from 2 to 10 feet deep. 

 The leaves are composed of slender but 

 rather stiff filaments, twice or thrice 

 forked, and sparingly furnished with 

 small acute projections. They grow in 

 whorls of from 5 to 12, and are usually 

 much crowded on the upper part of the 

 stem. 



The fruit of coontail (fig. 23) is com- 

 posed of a rather large, flattened seed, 

 wedge-shaped at one end and rounded 

 at the other, inclosed in a thin covering 

 which bears various tubercles on the 

 surface and spines on the margin. A 

 common form has one spine at the apex 

 and one at each basal angle of the fruit. 

 One may examine many plants without 

 finding fruit ; nevertheless, the frequency 

 with which ducks find it proves that a FlG - 22.— coontail. a diffuse form. 

 good crop is produced. Coontail is known also as hornwort, horn- 

 weed, morass-weed, coontail moss, fish-blankets, and June grass. 



DISTRIBUTION. 



Coontail is practically cosmopol- 

 itan and occurs throughout all but 

 the extreme northern parts of North 

 America. 



PROPAGATION. 



Pieces of coontail broken off from 

 the parent plant promptly make 

 new colonies, a characteristic which 

 makes transplanting easy. Care 

 need be taken only to see that the 

 plants do not lose their vitality 



either through drying or fermentation during shipment. 



Plant in quiet water. As the plant has no roots, it is enabled to 



thrive over hard or sandy bottoms where many other plants can not 



establish themselves. 



Fig. 23. — Seeds and fruit of coontail. 



