PLANTS: Perennial herbs, emergent-aquatic or amphibious, of brackish and fresh water, generally glabrous.

STEMS: unbranched, the submerged stems lax, the emergent stems erect, arising from creeping rhizomes.

LEAVES: whorled in sets of (4-)6-12(-16), simple, estipulate; margins entire; submersed leaves slender, thin and flaccid, often soon degenerating; aerial leaves thicker and firmer, numerous and rather crowded, linear-attenuate.

FLOWERS: solitary in upper leafaxils, inconspicuous, sessile or the lower on short pedicels; perfect or rarely imperfect, occasionally polygamous; calyx reduced to an inconspicuous, 2-4-lobed or subentire rim around the top of the ovary; petals none; stamen 1, with a short, slender filament and a large 2-celled sagittate anther; pistil simple, the ovary inferior, unicarpellate; style terminal, elongate, slender, generally lying in the groove between the two anther sacs.

FRUIT: a small, smooth achene.

NOTES: (Greek: hippos = horse + oura = tail, for the growth form above water).

REFERENCES: Ricketson, Jon. 1995 Hippuridaceae. J. Ariz. - Nev. Acad. Sci. 29(l): 25.

Characters of the family.

Gleason, Henry A. & Cronquist, Arthur J. 1991. Manual of vascular plants of northeastern United States and adjacent Canada. lxxv + 910 pp.

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