Sagittaria
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 S. sagittifolia | ||||||||||||
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Sagittaria is a genus of about 20 species of aquatic plants whose members go by a variety of common names, including arrowhead, duck potato, katniss, kuwai, swan potato, tule potato, and wapatoo.
Several species bear tubers edible as a starchy root vegetable that are collected from the wild or cultivated as crops in North America and East Asia.
Description
Stock often stoloniferous and tuberiferous. Leaves aerial, floating or submerged. Flowers unisexual or polygamous, in umbela, racemes or panicles with female or hermaphrodite flowers at the base and male flowers above or occasionally with the flowers all male or all female. Stamens usually numerous. Carpels numerous, spirally arranged, free, each with 1 ovule; styles apical or subventral. Fruitlets achenial, laterally compressed, obliquely obovate, the margins winged, with apical or ventral beak.
Probably due to introductions from the aquarium trade, S. platyphylla (Engelm) G. E. Sm. is naturalized in at least one locality in N. Italy and S. subulata (L.) Buchenau in at least one locality in S. England.
Several species are commonly grown in aquariums or in the pond.
Ecology
Found in canals, ponds, ditches and slow rivers but is never abundant
Species
- Sagittaria aginashi Makino
- Sagittaria cuneata E. P. Sheld. (Wapato, Arrowhead, Swamp Potato)
- Sagittaria fasciculata (Bunched Arrowhead)
- Sagittaria graminea (Grassy Arrowhead)
- Sagittaria lancifolia L. (Bulltongue Arrowhead)
- Sagittaria latifolia Willd. (Duck-potato, Broad Leaf Arrowhead)
- Sagittaria montevidensis (California Arrowhead)
- Sagittaria platyphylla (Delta Arrowhead, Delta Duck-potato)
- Sagittaria rigida Pursh. (Canadian Arrowhead)
- Sagittaria sagittifolia L. (Arrowhead)
- Sagittaria subulata L. Buch. (Narrow-leaved Arrowhead)
- Sagittaria trifolia L.
References
- Rataj, K., Annot. Zool. Bot. (Bratislava) 76:1-31 (1972); 78:1-61 (1972)
- Staff of the L. H. Bailey Hortorium, Hortus Third, pg. 993
