Common Name: WATER-PLANTAIN FAMILY
Habit: Annual, perennial herb from caudices, corms, stolons, rhizomes, or tubers, aquatic (+- emergent or on mud); roots fibrous, septate or not; monoecious, dioecious, or flowers bisexual. Stem: caudex short. Leaf: basal, simple, palmately veined, floating or not; submersed generally linear to ovate; emergent linear to sagittate. Inflorescence: generally scapose, umbel-, raceme-, or panicle-like; flowers, branches whorled. Flower: radial; sepals 3, generally green, generally persistent; petals 3, generally > sepals, white or pink; stamens 6--many; pistils 6--many, free or +- fused at base. Fruit: achene, generally compressed, beaked.
Genera In Family: +- 12 genera, 75--100 species: especially tropics, subtropics.
eFlora Treatment Author: Charles E. Turner, Robert R. Haynes & C. Barre Hellquist
Scientific Editor: Thomas J. Rosatti.

Common Name: BURHEAD
Habit: Annual, perennial herb; roots not septate; flowers bisexual. Leaf: petiole angled; blade linear to ovate, with [without] translucent dots or lines, base tapered to cordate. Inflorescence: axes generally angled; peduncle generally smooth. Flower: receptacle convex; sepals generally 2--6 mm, dark green; petals generally entire, white; stamens 9--15; pistils many, free, spiralled on convex receptacle. Fruit: body +- compressed, generally ribbed; beak terminal [lateral].
Etymology: (Greek: spiny, leathery container, from fruit)
Unabridged Reference: Haynes & Holm-Nielsen 1986 Brittonia 38:325--332