Southern Wetland Flora
Field Office Guide to Plant Species
Proserpinaca pectinata Lam.
- Family: Milfoil (Haloragidaceae)
- Flowering: June-October
- Field Marks: This species, which often is found in standing water, has all leaves pinnately divided, with none of the leaf segments more than 1/20 inch wide.
- Habitat: Wet sandy ditches, stream banks, bogs, shores, borders of swamps and sloughs, wet savannas, flatwoods, often in shallow water.
- Habit: Perennial herb, often growing in water.
- Stems: Creeping, rooting at the nodes if on land, often branched, smooth, up to 1 1/2 feet long.
- Leaves: Alternate, up to 1 1/2 inches long, deeply pinnately divided into 10-18 very narrow segments in water, each segment less than 1/20 inch wide and sometimes with minute teeth; leaves on terrestrial plants merely toothed.
- Flowers: Solitary in the leaf axils.
- Sepals: 3, green, triangular, united below.
- Petals: 0.
- Stamens: 3.
- Pistils: Ovary superior; styles 3.
- Fruits: Ovoid, 3-angled, up to 1/6 inch long.
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