1. Hottonia inflata Elliott (water violet, featherfoil)

Pl. 509 i, j; Map 2320

Plants biennial, emergent aquatics. Stems 25–90 cm long, spongy internally, all or mostly submerged. Leaves alternate, scattered along the submerged portion of the stem and clustered in a more or less floating whorl beneath the emergent inflorescence, 4–10 cm long, sessile or short-petiolate, finely pinnately dissected with numerous slender segments. Infloresences spikelike racemes grouped into a sessile umbel, the flowers borne in whorls of 2–10 on inflated, emergent axes, these 12–30 cm long, 0.5–1.5 cm thick, ascending at flowering, becoming more or less horizontal (floating) at fruiting, conspicuously segmented at the nodes, inconspicuously pubescent with minute, gland-tipped and nonglandular hairs. Bracts 3–8 mm long, linear, Flower stalks 3–10(–15) mm long, often with glandular dots or short hairs. Calyces deeply lobed, lobes 4–9 mm long, 1 mm wide, linear-oblong, with glandular dots or hairs. Corollas 4–5 mm long, white, 5-lobed to below the midpoint, the lobes rounded to bluntly pointed at the tips. Stamens 5, short, the filaments attached in the corolla tube. Ovary broadly ovoid to nearly globose, the style short, slender, the stigma club-shaped. Fruits capsules, 2.0–2.5 mm long more or less pear-shaped to nearly globose, green, membranous, dehiscing longitudinally by 5 valves. Seeds minute, 0.2–0.3 mm long, oblong in outline, the surface with faint lines. 2n=22. April–July.

Uncommon in the northern portion of the Mississippi Lowlands Division and adjacent counties of the eastern Ozarks (eastern U.S. west to Missouri and Texas). Swamps, sloughs, oxbows, sinkhole ponds, and lakes; also ditches; emergent aquatics, sometimes stranded on mud.

In this unusual species, the seeds are dispersed into the water during the summer, germinating and producing stems with several usually submerged leaves by first frost. Plants survive under the ice or water’s surface and grow to reach the surface late the following spring. After flowering, the inflated stems fall over and the leaves are shed as the seeds mature (Channel and Wood, 1959). The abundance of this plant appears to vary tremendously from year to year. It is considered uncommon in most of its range.