Pontederiaceae
Read about Pontederiaceae in the Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture
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Pontederiaceae (from the genus Pontederia, named in honor of Pontedera, professor at Padua in the 18th century). Pickerel-weed Family. Fig. 11. Upright or floating, fleshy, water- or swamp-plants: leaves alternate; petioles sheathing; blade cordate, oval, or orbicular, or reduced to the linear flattened petiole: flowers not bracted, bisexual, irregular, hypogynous; perianth of 6 similar parts, in 2 whorls, more or less connate, persistent; stamens 3 or 6, rarely 1, inserted unequally on the perianth-tube; anthers introse; ovary superior, 3-celled and ovules many, or 1-celled and 1-seeded; style 1; stigmas 3: fruit a capsule, or an achene enveloped by the fleshy persistent base of the perianth; embryo as long as the endosperm. The family contains 6 genera and about 20 species, of which 9 belong to the genus Heteranthera, and about 5 to Eichhornia. They are distributed in the swamps of the warmer parts of the earth, except Europe. The family is most closely related to the Liliaceae, from which it differs in the irregular flowers, in the sympodial method of growth, in anatomical characters, and principally in the abundant mealy endosperm. A decoction of the root of Monocharia vaginalis of the Far East is used for liver and stomach complaints; the root is chewed for toothache; pulverized and mixed with sugar it is used for asthma; the leaves bruised and mixed with milk are used for cholera; and the shoots are edible. Eichhornia crassipes is a floating fleshy plant with beautiful flowers. It has become so abundant in Florida as to interfere seriously with steamboat navigation in the rivers. The large violet flowers of both Eichhornia and Pontederia are valued in cultivation for water-gardens. Two genera are frequent in cultivation: Eichhornia (Water Hyacinth), from South America; and Pontederia (Pickerel-weed), native.CH
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References
- Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture, by L. H. Bailey, MacMillan Co., 1963
External links
- w:Pontederiaceae. Some of the material on this page may be from Wikipedia, under the Creative Commons license.
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