Author:
Jan Scholten
Book:
Wonderful Plants
Type:
Picture
Chapter:
633.14.00
633.14.00 Alismataceae
English: water-plantain family; including Limnocharitaceae.
Botany: 11 Genera; ± 90 species; Alisma, Alismaticarpum, Baldellia, Butomopsis, Burnatia, Cladesia, Damasonium, Echinodourus, Hydrocleys, Limnocharis, Limnophyton, Luronium, Machaerocarpus, Ranalisma, Sagisma, Sagittaria, Wiesneria.
Botany: cosmopolitan, temperate Northern Hemisphere; herbaceous aquatic, marshes and ponds; mostly robust perennials; stems corm-like or stoloniferous; leaves juvenile submersed and linear, mature and immersed linear to ovate or even sagittate, with distinct petiole, sheathed base; inflorescence whorls of branches or umbel-like or solitary flowers, regular, bisexual or unisexual; three sepals; three petals, usually conspicuous, white, pink, purple, occasionally with yellow or purple spots, last mostly one day; stamens 3, 6, 9 or numerous; ovary superior, of 3 to numerous free carpels in one whorl or in a clustered head, containing each 1 (-2) anatropous ovules; fruit is a head of nutlets; seeds have no endosperm and a curved or folded embryo.
Taxonomy
Alismataceae are placed in Subphase 4 in the Plant theory.
Introduction
Alismataceae is the best known family of the Alismatales. But we have only scarce information on the genera Alisma and Sagittaria.
They feel like a newcomer to a group or in a newly formed friendship with another person but feel as if they belong with them.