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: WATER-PLANTAIN
Habit: Perennial herb; roots not septate; flowers bisexual. Leaf: blade linear to ovate, tapered to base or petioled, base tapered to truncate, rounded, or +- lobed. Inflorescence: peduncle generally smooth; pedicels < 45 mm in fruit. Flower: receptacle +- flat; sepals generally 1--4 mm; petals entire to +- cut, white or pink; stamens generally 6; pistils many, free, in 1 whorl on margin of +- flat receptacle. Fruit: body generally 1.5--3 mm, erect, generally strongly compressed, lateral walls opaque to translucent, abaxially thin-ridged; beak < body, generally lateral.
Etymology: (Greek: ancient name) Note: North American species need study.
Unabridged Reference: Bjorkqvist 1968 Opera Bot 19:1--138