Sagittaria lancifolia L.

• Authority

  Britton, Nathaniel L. Flora Borinqueña.

• Family

  Alismataceae

• Scientific Name

  Sagittaria lancifolia L.

• Description

  Species Description - The plants of this family inhabit fresh-water, or fresh-water mud, the majority of kinds in the temperate zones, a few species only growing in the tropics. They are herbaceous, mostly perennial by rootstock, the leaves borne at the base of the flowering stem, and their flowers have 3 sepals and usually 3 white petals. Sagittaria is the ancient name of the European Arrowhead, which has leaves shaped like the tip of an arrow, and some of the other species have similar leaves, but those of the one here illustrated are shaped, more or less, like a lance, whence both the botanical and the English name. About 40 species are known. Sagittaria lancifolia grows in shallow water in Porto Rico, locally abundant, attractive when in bloom; it has a wide geographic distribution, from the southern United States, through the West Indies and South America to Argentina, and is variable as regards to length and width of its leaves; in Laguna Tortuguero and other sandy lakes and pools on the northern coastal plain, the leaves are often much narrower than those of the specimen here illustrated, which grew near Santurce. In the species only the lower flowers of each cluster produce fruit, for the upper ones bear stamens only. Ordinarily the plants are less than a meter high, but specimens twice that height have been recorded. The leaves are long-pointed at the apex, 50 centimeters in length, or much shorter, and usually from about 2 centimeters to about 10 centimeters wide, sometimes wider; they are nearly upright, with black-mottled stalks. The flowering stem (scape) is usually taller than the basel leaves, branched, and bears narrow, long-pointed, reduced, leaf-like organs (bracts) from 1 to 3 centimeters long. The flowers appear few together in radiating clusters, on slender stalks from 1 to 3 centimeters long; the small sepals are blunt; the broad, rounded petals are snow-white, thin, from 10 to 15 millimeters long, or sometimes longer, and fall away rather promplty; the upper flowers have many short stamens, with small 2-celled anthers, but no pistils; the lower flowers have many short pistils, and are without stamens, or have some imperfect ones. The pistils ripen into dry, 1-seeded structures (achenes), 2 or 3 millimeters long, densely aggregated into globose heads 10 to 14 millimeters in diameter. Our illustration was first published in "Addisonia', plate 406, in 1927.

• Discussion

  Lancehead Lirio de agua Water-plantain Family Sagittaria lancifolia Linnaeus, Systema [Vegetabilium], edition 10, 1270. 1759.