WATER PLANTAIN FAMILY 21 
3. ALISMACEA. Water PLANTAIN FAMILY 
Annual or perennial marsh herbs, usually with creeping run- 
ners or rootstocks. Stems scape-like. Leaves long-petioled, 
sheathing at the base; petiole rounded; blade nerved, netted, 
or sometimes wanting. Flowers in racemes or panicles, bisex- 
ual, moncecious or dicecious ; pedicels in bracted whorls. Sepals 
3, persistent; petals 3or wanting. Stamens 6or more. Ovaries 
few or many, 1-celled, 1-seeded; style short or none. Fruit a 
1-seeded akene.* 
I. SAGITTARIA L 
Perennial; rootstocks mostly knobby or tuber-bearing. 
Seapes erect or decumbent. Leaves long-petioled, sheathing 
at the base, the blade round and netted, or wanting. Flowers 
moncecious or dicecious, racemed in 3-bracted whorls of threes, 
the upper flowers usually staminate. Sepals 3, persistent; 
petals 3, withering-persistent or deciduous. Stamens few or 
many. Ovaries in globose heads, 1-ovuled; style short, per- 
sistent. Fruit a subglobose head of flattened akenes.* 
1. S. latifolia Willd. Broap-Lravep ARROWHEAD. Leaves very 
variable in size and shape, from broadly sagittate to linear, those 
growing on the drier soil being usually the broader; petioles 6-30 
in. long. Scape smooth or slightly downy, 6-36 in. high; bracts 
acute. Flowers monecious or sometimes dicecious, white, 1 in. or 
more in width; pedicels of the staminate flowers twice the length of 
those of the fertile flowers. Filaments long, smooth, and slender. 
Akenes with beak nearly horizontal. Ditches and muddy places.* 
2. S. graminea Michx. Grass-Leavep Sagittarra. Leaves 
long-petioled, lanceolate, or elliptical, and acute at each end, 3-5- 
nerved, or often linear, the earlier ofter reduced to flattened petioles. 
Scape slender, usually longer than the leaves, simple, weak, often 
prostrate in fruit; bracts small, ovate, connate at the base. Flowers 
moneecious or dicecious, on long, thread-like pedicels, about 4 in. wide. 
Stamens 10-20, filaments downy. Akenes nearly beakless. In ditches 
and shallow pools.* 
I. ALISMA L. 
Annual or perennial herbs. Leaves erect or floating, blades 
prominently ribbed and netted, or even pinnately veined. 
