Sagittaria

Sagitarria
S. sagittifolia
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Plantae
(unranked):	Angiosperms
(unranked):	Monocots
Order:	Alismatales
Family:	Alismataceae
Genus:	Sagittaria L.
Species
See text

Sagittaria or "arrowhead" is a genus of about 20 species of aquatic plants whose members go by a variety of common names, including arrowhead, duck potato, iz-ze-kn,^[1] katniss, kuwai (くわい in Japanese), swan potato, tule potato, and wapato (or 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

Sagittaria sagittifolia flowers

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.

They are found in all United States. 6"-10" inches long and a half an inch wide.

Ecology

Found in canals, ponds, ditches and slow rivers but is never abundant

References

1. ^ The Probert Encyclopaedia - Animals And Plants (A)

• 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

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Sagittaria

• ITIS report
• Plants for a Future
• The Arrowheads
• Ethnobotany of S. latifolia
• Edibility of Sagittaria: Identification and edible parts of Sagittaria.