Sagittaria
Read about Sagittaria in the Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture
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Sagittaria (sagitta is Latin for arrow, referring to the arrow-shaped leaves). Alismaceae. Arrowhead. Perennial hardy herbs useful for foliage effects in bogs and shallow ponds and also for their white buttercup-like flowers. Plants of mostly erect habit, aquatic, the lvs. and scapes arising from more or less tuberous or knotted rootstocks: lvs. typically arrow-shaped, with long basal lobes, but sometimes long and linear: fls. imperfect, monoecious (staminate fls. usually in the uppermost whorls) or dioecious, with 3 white broad petals and 3 small greenish sepals, the stamens and pistils numerous, the latter ripening into small achenes; infl. composed of successive whorls of 3-stalked fls. Sometimes the lvs. are floating. The number of species admitted is variable, but Buchenau in the last treatment of the genus in Engler’s Das Pflanzenreich, hft. 16 (iv. 15, 1903) describes 31. Temperate and tropical regions of the world though lacking in Afr. and Austral. Sagittarias are mostly used for colonizing in the open, but S. montevidensis—now the most popular species—is grown in indoor aquaria or plunged in open ponds in the summer. The arrowheads are perennials of easy culture, although likely to be infested with aphis. Propagation is by division, or sometimes by seeds. S. macrophylla has appeared in trade-lists as "a variety with large foliage and tall lax spikes of white fls." Its botanical position is uncertain as there are two distinct things of this name, one a valid species, the other a large-lvd. form of 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
