Var. flùitans, Engelm. Floating in deep water, with long slender stems and flat narrow leaves; inflorescence usually short, sparingly branched; style stout with a short oval stigma; fruiting heads 4–6´´ broad; nutlets dark, as large as in the type. (S. androcladum, var. fluctuans, Morong.; not S. fluitans, Fries.)—Ponds, Penn., W. Conn., White Mts., N. Minn., and northward.
3. S. mínimum, Fries. Usually floating, with very slender stems and thin flat narrow leaves; fertile heads 1 or 2, axillary, sessile or peduncled (4–5´´ wide); stigma oval, about as long as the short style, scarcely surpassing the oval or obovate denticulate scales; fruit oblong-obovate (1–2´´ long), pointed, somewhat triangular, the stipe very short or none.—N. Eng. to Penn., N. Ind., Minn., north and westward.—Stems 3–6´ high when growing out of water, much longer when submerged. (Eu.)
Order 123. ARÀCEÆ. (Arum Family.)
Plants with acrid or pungent juice, simple or compound often veiny leaves, and flowers crowded on a spadix, which is usually surrounded by a spathe.—Floral envelopes none, or of 4–6 sepals. Fruit usually a berry. Seeds with fleshy albumen, or none, but filled with the large fleshy embryo. A large family, chiefly tropical. Herbage abounding in slender rhaphides.—The genuine Araceæ have no floral envelopes, and are almost all monœcious or diœcious; but the genera of the second section, with more highly developed flowers, are not to be separated.
[*] Spathe surrounding or subtending the spadix; flowers naked, i.e. without perianth.
1. Arisæma. Flowers monœcious or diœcious, covering only the base of the spadix.
2. Peltandra. Flowers monœcious, covering the spadix; anthers above, ovaries below.
3. Calla. Flowers perfect (at least the lower ones), covering the whole of the short spadix. Spathe open and spreading.
[*][*] Spathe surrounding the spadix in n. 4, none or imperfect in the rest; flowers with a calyx or perianth and perfect, covering the whole spadix.
4. Symplocarpus. Spadix globular, in a fleshy shell-shaped spathe. Stemless.