Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center


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Aquatic and Wetland Vascular Plants of the Northern Great Plains

Pontederiaceae - The Pickerelweed Family

Aquatic or amphibious annuals and perennials with short to elongate stems. Leaves alternate, sessile and straplike or differentiated into petiole and expanded blade, membranous-sheathing at the base in the latter instance. Flowers solitary (in those included here) from the axils, subtended by a sheathing spathe, pale yellow or white to purplish-blue, perfect, regular, hypogynous; perianth of 6 petaloid lobes, united below into a tube, salverform; stamens 3 (in ours), all alike or 1 unlike the other 2, the filaments adnate to the throat of the perianth tube; pistil 3-carpellary, stigma 3-lobed, style 1, ovary incompletely 3-celled by intrusion of the parietal placentae. Fruit a many-seeded, often indehiscent capsule retained inside the spathe; seeds conspicuously ribbed.

Lead	Characteristic	Go To
1	Leaves differentiated into petiole and expanded blade, emersed or floating; flowers white to purplish-blue	Genus Heteranthera
1	Leaves linear, straplike, not differentiated into petiole and blade, usually submersed; flowers light yellow	Genus Zosterella

66. Pontederiaceae, the Pickerelweed Family

1. Heteranthera R. & P. -- Mud plantain

1. Heteranthera limosa (Sw.) Willd.

2. Zosterella Small

1. Zosterella dubia (Jacq.) Small -- Water stargrass

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