Common Name: MARSILEA FAMILY Habit: Plant generally aquatic or in perennially wet areas, generally rooted in mud; rhizome creeping, slender, branched. Leaf: floating, emergent, or out of water, +- alike; blade 1-palmate or 0, << stipe; veins not or repeatedly forked, free or netted. Sporangia: in stalked, spheric or +- flat-ovoid, hard cases of 1 kind, attached near stipe base. Spores: large megaspores (female) and small microspores (male), in separate sporangia. Genera In Family: 3 genera, +- 70 species: especially temperate. eFlora Treatment Author: Andy Murdock, Alan R. Smith & Thomas Lemieux Scientific Editor: Alan R. Smith, Bruce G. Baldwin.
Habit: Aquatic, submerged or in mud, forming dense clumps. Sporangium Case: subterranean, fused to stalk tip, spheric, hairy; teeth 0. Etymology: (Latin: little ball, from sporangium case)
Pilularia americana A. Braun
NATIVE Leaf: generally 2--6(11) cm. Sporangium Case: +- 2--3 mm diam; stalk 1--3 mm. Chromosomes: 2n=20. Ecology: Vernal pools, mud flats, lake margins; Elevation: < 2000 m. Bioregional Distribution: NCoRI, CaR, SNF, n SNH, GV, CCo, SnFrB, SCoR, SCo, WTR, PR, MP; Distribution Outside California: Oregon, Baja California; also scattered central and southeastern United States, South America. Note: Poorly collected, often overlooked due to its small, grass-like appearance. Jepson eFlora Author: Andy Murdock, Alan R. Smith & Thomas Lemieux Index of California Plant Names (ICPN; linked via the Jepson Online Interchange) Previous taxon: Pilularia Next taxon: Ophioglossaceae
Botanical illustration including Pilularia americana
Citation for this treatment: Andy Murdock, Alan R. Smith & Thomas Lemieux 2012, Pilularia americana, in Jepson Flora Project (eds.) Jepson eFlora, https://ucjeps.berkeley.edu/eflora/eflora_display.php?tid=38232, accessed on April 20, 2024.
Citation for the whole project: Jepson Flora Project (eds.) 2024, Jepson eFlora, https://ucjeps.berkeley.edu/eflora/, accessed on April 20, 2024.
Geographic subdivisions for Pilularia americana:
NCoRI, CaR, SNF, n SNH, GV, CCo, SnFrB, SCoR, SCo, WTR, PR, MP
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(Note: any qualifiers in the taxon distribution description, such as 'northern', 'southern', 'adjacent' etc., are not reflected in the map above, and in some cases indication of a taxon in a subdivision is based on a single collection or author-verified occurence).
Data provided by the participants of the
Consortium of California Herbaria.
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Blue markers indicate specimens that map to one of the expected Jepson geographic subdivisions (see left map). Purple markers indicate specimens collected from a garden, greenhouse, or other non-wild location.
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CCH collections by month
Duplicates counted once; synonyms included.
Species do not include records of infraspecific taxa, if there are more than 1 infraspecific taxon in CA.
Blue line denotes eFlora flowering time (fruiting time in some monocot genera).
