Description
Key Characters:
Growth Form:
Plants completely submerged.
Stems:
Stems filiform, terete (cylindrical), 3–8(–10) dm long, many branched throughout most of their length, arising from slender, creeping rhizomes, these terminated by a slender white tuber 1–1.5 cm long.
Roots:
Fibrous root system.
Leaves:
Leaves simple.
Alternate.
Blades filiform, 20–120(–150) mm long, 0.2–0.8(–1) mm wide.
Apex attenuate.
Surfaces glabrous.
1(3)-veined.
Sheathing.
Stipules adnate to leaf base, forming a slender sheath around the stem (10–)20–30 mm long, persistent, occasionally spreading from the leaf, the upper portion forming a short hyaline ligule.
Flowers:
Flowers in slender spikes 10–30 mm long, usually with 2–6 unequally spaced whorls of flowers, peduncles slender, 10–150(–250) mm long.
Flowers small, wind–pollinated, bisexual (perfect), actinomorphic.
Perianth of 4 tepals in 1 series, brownish green, 1–1.5 mm long.
Stamens 4 in 1 series, opposite the tepals, adnate to the claw; anthers subsessile, dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits, extrorse.
Pollen spheric.
Ovary superior, carpels 4, distinct, alternate with the stamens; ovule 1, attached to the ventral margin of the carpel usually toward the base, orthotropous, usually becoming campylotropous or anatropous after fertilization; style short, terminal, or absent; stigma dry, not papillose.
Fruit:
Fruit obliquely ovoid; 2.5–4.2 mm long; the dorsal keel low; rounded; the 2 lateral keels inconspicuous; style persistent.
Seeds without endosperm.
Ploidy:
2n = 42
Habitat:
Sparingly naturalized in ponds and along water courses on Ni'ihau and Kaua'i.
Elevation Range:
0–5 m.