Elatine L.

Annual, small herbs, aquatic, amphibious or terrestrial; stems erect or prostrate, flaccid-succulent, 2 - 7.8 cm long, glabrous. Leaves opposite or verticillate; sessile or shortly petioled, linear-spathulate to oblong, entire; stipules minute, hyaline, entire or finely toothed. Flowers small, solitary or in pairs; sessile or pedicelled, trimerous. Sepals 3, equal, membranous, obtuse, persistent. Petals membranous, usually orbicular in terrestrial species, often campanulately spreading. Stamens as many as petals or sometimes reduced to 1. Ovary globose, 3-loculed. Capsules globose, membranous, septicidal. Seeds numerous, minute, cylindric, oblong, straight or curved, with scalariform reticulations.

Tropical, subtropical and temperate regions of both the hemispheres, ca 20 species; 3 in India.

KEY TO THE SPECIES

1a. Flowers subsessile to distinctly pedicelled; stamens shorter than sepals; seeds 4 - 6 in each locule

1. Elatine ambigua

b. Flowers sessile; stamens longer than sepals; seeds 6 - 12 in each locule

2

2a. Seeds 10 - 12 in each locule; leaves elliptic

3. Elatine triandra

b. Seeds 6 - 8 in each locule; leaves linear-spathulate

2. Elatine gracilis

List of Lower Taxa