Sagittaria lancifolia is a perennial, monocot plant in the family Alismataceae

Alismataceae

The water-plantains are a family of flowering plants, comprising 11 genera and between 85-95 species. The family has a cosmopolitan distribution, with the greatest number of species in temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere...

, genus Sagittaria

Sagittaria

Sagittaria is a genus of about 30 species of aquatic plants whose members go by a variety of common names, including arrowhead, duck potato, iz-ze-kn, katniss, kuwai , swan potato, tule potato, and wapato...

, with herbaceous

Herbaceous

A herbaceous plant is a plant that has leaves and stems that die down at the end of the growing season to the soil level. They have no persistent woody stem above ground...

 growth patterns. It is native

Native plant

Native plant is a term to describe plants endemic or naturalized to a given area in geologic time.This includes plants that have developed, occur naturally, or existed for many years in an area...

 to the southeastern United States and westward through Texas. It is also known as "duck potato" because of the large potato-like corms which can form underground.

Description

The plant is conspicuous for its large, lance-shaped leaves which grow up from underground rhizomes and its showy, white three-petaled flowers which form at the end of long, thick stalks. Each flower has three green sepal

Sepal

A sepal is a part of the flower of angiosperms . Collectively the sepals form the calyx, which is the outermost whorl of parts that form a flower. Usually green, sepals have the typical function of protecting the petals when the flower is in bud...

s, three white or pink-tinged petals, at least six stamens, and pistils which may be in separate flowers. The plant likes to grow in fresh or brackish water and is commonly found in ditches, marshes, swamps and along the shores of lakes and streams.

S. lancifolia reproduces both asexually

Asexual reproduction

Asexual reproduction is a mode of reproduction by which offspring arise from a single parent, and inherit the genes of that parent only, it is reproduction which does not involve meiosis, ploidy reduction, or fertilization. A more stringent definition is agamogenesis which is reproduction without...

 through spreading rhizomes and sexually

Sexual reproduction

Sexual reproduction is the creation of a new organism by combining the genetic material of two organisms. There are two main processes during sexual reproduction; they are: meiosis, involving the halving of the number of chromosomes; and fertilization, involving the fusion of two gametes and the...

 through reproduction of copious achenes, a dry fruit each of which carries a single seed. The achenes are dispersed through animal vectors

Vector (dispersal)

In the biology of dispersal, a dispersal vector is "an agent transporting seeds or other dispersal units". Dispersal vectors may include biotic factors, such as animals, or abiotic factors, such as the wind....

 and through hydrochory (dispersal through wind, water, or gravity). The achenes germinate only under light, and with or without available fluid, but the period of their germination is shorter when they are submersed in water. Temperature is a factor, with 100% germination occurring at 20 °C (68 °F). Germination is reduced in anaerobic conditions. Growth is also dependent on temperature.

Sensitivity to in-situ burning of applied crude oil

Louisiana is one of the top five U.S. states in oil production, oil that is piped through marshes in Louisiana to market and sometimes leaks into the marsh land polluting it. Field studies suggest that, although the application and burning of South Louisiana Crude oil on Sagittaria l. plants in plots of fresh Louisiana marsh land had short term negative effects on the growth rate of Sagittaria l., over time plant recovery was just as rapid as in the plots where the plants were oiled but not burned. This suggests that allowing a polluted marsh to degrade and recover without burning is a viable option, while burning is a viable option when a rapid recovery is needed on sensitive lands.