Marsilea minuta
species of plant

Marsilea minuta, or dwarf waterclover is a species of aquatic fern in the family Marsileaceae. It is not to be confused with Marsilea minuta E.Fourn. 1880, which is a synonym for Marsilea vestita. Other common names include gelid waterklawer, small water clover, airy pepperwort, and pepperwort, though the lattermost also applies to plants in the genus Lepidium. In French it is called marsilea à quatre feuilles (literally "four-leafed marsilea") and petite marsilée (literally "little Marsilea"), the latter appearing to be a calque with the Latin botanical name. In Chinese it is 南国田字草 (nan guo tian zi cao), literally "southern field word grass," referencing the similarity of the leaflet shape to the Chinese character for "field." The Koch Rajbongshi people and Garo people call it shusni shak.
It is called 'শুশনি শাক' (shushni shak) in Bengali. In parts of India it can be called sunisanakka. In Indonesian it is semanggi (literally "clover"), but this name also applies to Marsilea crenata. In Japanese it is nangokudenjiso and in Thai it is phakwaen.
“Marsilea minuta” enters the record as species of plant. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Marsilea, minuta and species can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Marsilea minuta” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Marsilea, minuta and species provides the most credible route into that argument.
Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q15249917. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1880.
Current terminology should not be projected backward without checking the classification used when the underlying evidence was created. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Marsilea minuta” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.