Hydrocharitaceae
family of plants
Hydrocharitaceae is a flowering plant family which includes 14 accepted genera and a total of ca 135 known species (Christenhusz & Byng 2016). The family holds a number of species of aquatic plants, including tape-grass, the well-known Canadian waterweed, and frogbit.
The family includes both freshwater and marine aquatics. They are found throughout the world in a wide variety of habitats, but are primarily tropical.
Description
The species are annual or perennial, with a creeping monopodial rhizome with the leaves arranged in two vertical rows, or an erect main shoot with roots at the base and spirally arranged or whorled leaves. The leaves are simple and usually found submerged, though they may be found floating or partially emerse. As with many aquatics they can be quite variable in shape – from linear to orbicular, with or without a petiole, and with or without a sheathing base.
The flowers are arranged in a forked, spathe-like bract or between two opposite bracts. They are usually irregular, though in some case they may be slightly irregular, and either bisexual or unisexual. The perianth segments are in 1 or 2 series of 2–3 free segments; the inner series when present are usually showy and petal-like.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Hydrocharitaceae” is family of plants. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Hydrocharitaceae, family and plants, not as a finished interpretation.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q156029. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2016.
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This entry incorporates text from “Hydrocharitaceae” 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.