Common Name: GINSENG FAMILY
Habit: Perennial herb, shrub, tree, woody vine; juvenile, flower plants generally unlike. Stem: generally branched. Leaf: simple or compound, generally alternate; stipules +- fused to +- sheathing, petiole base or 0. Inflorescence: umbels 1 to panicled; bracts deciduous or not. Flower: generally bisexual, generally radial, generally < 5 mm; sepals generally 5, fused at base, inconspicuous, persistent; petals generally 5, free, +- white to green, deciduous; stamens generally 5, generally alternate petals; ovary inferior, chambers 1--15, 1-ovuled, styles as many as chambers, free or fused, persistent. Fruit: berry or drupe, occasionally flat, dry.
Genera In Family: 47 genera, 1350 species: especially tropics, subtropics medicinal (e.g., Panax, ginseng; Aralia, sarsaparilla), ornamental (e.g., Aralia, Fatsia, Hedera, Polyscias).
eFlora Treatment Author: Robert E. Preston & Elizabeth McClintock, except as noted
Scientific Editor: Douglas H. Goldman, Bruce G. Baldwin.

Common Name: MARSH PENNYWORT
Habit: Perennial herb, creeping or sprawling, glabrous [hairy]; rhizomes or stem rooting at nodes. Leaf: simple; petiole scarious-stipuled, not sheathing; blade +- round, peltate or not, entire to deeply lobed. Inflorescence: simple umbels, occasionally spikes, open or dense; bracts 0 or inconspicuous; pedicels 0--many, spreading. Flower: calyx lobes 0 or minute; petals obtuse or acute, +- green to +- yellow-white or +- purple, tip not incurved. Fruit: elliptic to round, very compressed side-to-side; ribs +- equal, thread-like, distinct or not; oil tubes 0, fruit wall with individual oil cells; fruit central axis not obvious. Seed: face flat to convex.
Etymology: (Greek: water cup, apparently from leaf shape) Note: Hydrocotyle moschata G. Forst., Hydrocotyle ranunculoides, and Hydrocotyle sibthorpioides Lam. occasionally reported as lawn weeds.
eFlora Treatment Author: Robert E. Preston & Lincoln Constance