THE GREAT WATER-PLANTAIN— continued. 
The etymology of the name Alisma , which seems to have been applied to the 
Water-plantain by Dioscorides and Pliny, is uncertain, the Celtic a/is, meaning 
“ water,” being the most plausible suggestion. The name Plantago-aquatica is also 
ancient, and is obviously suggested by the prominence of the longitudinal veins in 
the leaves, which resemble those of the true Plantains of the Dicotyledonous genus 
Plantago , so often too familiar to us on our lawns. It is probably too these strong 
veins or bundles of vascular tissue, the tissue by which the sap is conducted into and 
from the leaves, that suggest the book-name Thrumwort, though it is not as easy to 
draw the veins out of the leaf as threads or thrums in these plants as it is in the case 
of the true Plantains. 
The Great Water-plantain, as a sign of swampy ground not easily eradicated 
save by proper drainage, may well have been somewhat unpopular with the primitive 
agriculturist, who was apt to attribute things that he did not like to the father of 
evil, so that the shape of its leaves naturally originated the Scottish name for the 
plant of Deil’s spoons. 
The genus Alisma is characterised by its erect leaves, by the grouping of its 
flowers in cymose umbels of a few blossoms each, by having six stamens formed by 
the bifurcation of three and united below into a honey-secreting ring, and by its 
numerous free carpels, which are one-seeded and indehiscent. The flowers are 
scentless ; but are not of the opaque white that attracts the moths of the dusk, and 
quite sufficiently conspicuous for the diurnal marsh-flies that constitute the chief 
agents for their cross-pollination. The nectar is actually secreted by several small 
rounded glands between the staminal ring and the carpels, so that it is partially 
concealed, an arrangement generally associated with the visits of the longer-tongued 
flies and the shorter-tongued hymenopterous insects. 
The genus is wellnigh cosmopolitan, and our commonest and largest species, 
A. Plantago-aquatica L., is said to occur in Australia as well as throughout northern 
Temperate regions. 
This species grows two or three feet high and its leaves are from six to eight 
inches long. The first-formed leaves are often submerged or floating ; but the later 
ascending ones have from five to seven longitudinal ribs, and vary considerably in 
the way in which the blade passes into the long stalk, tapering or rounded in a 
sub-cordate manner. The branches of its graceful panicle become more slender at 
each successive branching from the bluntly triangular main stalk, and the delicate 
little flowers are often suffused with a pale pink, while the yellow base or claw of 
each petal recalls the blossoms of the Water-crowfoots. Stamens and carpels mature 
simultaneously, so that self-pollination is not prevented ; and the carpels, which 
may number from twenty to thirty, are arranged in a ring and thus become laterally 
compressed. 
