IX. — THE ARROW-HEAD. 
Sagittaria sagittifolia Linne. 
T HE beauty of this exquisite aquatic plant has attracted attention in many lands, 
apart altogether from its many points of botanical interest. There never could 
be any question as to an appropriate name to be assigned to it. In some of our 
early botanical books it is styled Water Archer, and Gerard says that it 
“hath large and long leaves, in shape like the signe Sagittarius, or rather like a bearded broad arrowe heade.’* 
It is Sagitiaire in French, Pfeilkraut in German, and Pijlkruid in Flemish ; and 
the shape of the leaves might have been thought a sufficient reason, without the 
crude suggestion of the doctrine of signatures that “ it is good to pull out arrows.” 
The plant is cultivated in China for the sake of its edible tubers and is frequently 
represented on Chinese drawings and porcelain, sometimes in association with the 
buds or fruits of the sacred lotus or cyamus (Nelumbium speciosum Willd.). They 
form the “egg and anchor” ornament in architecture ; and it has been suggested 
that as the egg-shaped buds of the Nelumbium are the emblem of fecundity, so the 
leaves of the Arrow-head may represent the contrary or destroying agency. 
Botanically, the genus Sagittaria is nearly related to Alisma , differing mainly 
in having monoecious flowers and an indefinite number of stamens. It includes 
about a dozen species, mostly American, several of which are in cultivation, such as 
S. heterophylla Pursh and S. montevidensis Chamisso and Schlechtendal, as is also a 
large Chinese form, S. sinensis , sometimes known to gardeners as S. gigantea or 
S. lancifolia , probably specifically identical with our plant. They can be propagated by 
seed sown in pans of sand half submerged in water, or by division, advantage being 
taken of their characteristically stoloniferous habit. The main stem is a short rhizome 
from which all the leaves originate, that is, they are all what is termed radical ; but 
from their axils spring the “ renewal shoots,” short branches that burrow into the 
mud and swell up at their apex into a globose starchy tuber or resting bud half an 
inch or more in diameter. These hibernating structures are the objects of the 
Chinese cultivation of the plant. In the spring they develop into new plants. 
No plant shows a greater variety in the adaptation of its leaves in relation to the 
condition of the surrounding water as to depth and movement. Three kinds of 
leaf are produced, the number of each kind depending upon these conditions. 
Those which are entirely submersed are merely elongated, flattened, thin, and pellucid 
petioles, without blades and therefore, of course, destitute of the characteristic barbs, 
and frequently attributed by mistake to some kind of Pond-weed or Potamogeton. 
Their transparency is due not only to their thinness, but to a character that they 
share with most submersed leaves and others growing in shade, where the light is 
but scanty, viz. a relatively small number of granules of chlorophyll, or green 
colouring-matter, which place themselves along the walls of the cells so as to receive 
the maximum amount of light which is in this case much lessened by refraction. 
