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: ARROWHEAD
Habit: Annual, perennial herb; roots septate; generally monoecious; scape generally straight at inflorescence. Leaf: petiole cylindric to 3-angled; submersed blades tapered to base; floating or emergent blades generally sagittate (linear to ovate). Inflorescence: lowest node generally with 3 pistillate flowers, those above generally staminate. Flower: sepals 3--10 mm, reflexed to appressed in fruit; petals generally entire. Staminate Flower: stamens 7--30. Pistillate Flower: receptacle convex; pistils many, spiralled on convex receptacle. Fruit: body generally 2--3.5 mm, strongly compressed, abaxially winged or ridged; beak generally lateral, spreading to erect.
Etymology: (Latin: arrow, from leaf shape) Note: Some species weedy; tubers of some eaten by humans, wildlife; Sagittaria brevirostra Mack. & Bush reportedly persisting at Stafford Lake and Chileno Laguna, Marin Co.
Unabridged Reference: Bogin 1955 Mem New York Bot Gard 9:179--233