Sagittaria

"Katniss" redirects here. For the Hunger Games character, see Katniss Everdeen.

For the Spanish drag queen, see Sagittaria (drag queen).

Sagittaria is a genus of about 30 species of aquatic plants whose members go by a variety of common names, including arrowhead, duck potato, swamp potato, tule potato, and wapato. Most are native to South, Central, and North America, but there are also some from Europe, Africa, and Asia.

Sagittaria
S. sagittifolia 1885 illustration
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Plantae
Clade:	Tracheophytes
Clade:	Angiosperms
Clade:	Monocots
Order:	Alismatales
Family:	Alismataceae
Genus:	Sagittaria L.
Type species
Sagittaria sagittifolia L.
Synonyms
Sagitta Guett. Diphorea Raf. Drepachenia Raf. Lophiocarpus (Kunth) Miq., illegitimate Lophotocarpus T.Durand Hydrolirion H.Lév.

Description

Sagittaria plant stock (the perennial rhizome) is a horizontal creeper (stoloniferous). The leaf grows up to .3–.9 metres (1–3 ft) tall, with a shape resembling an arrowhead. Between July and September, a single stalk bears groups of three white flowers with three petals each. It is obliquely obovate, the margins winged, with an apical or ventral beak; in other words, they are a small, dry, one-seeded fruit that do not open to release the seed, set on a slant, narrower at the base, with winged edges, and having a "beaked" aperture (one side longer than the other) for sprouting, set above or below the fruit body.

• 
  Arrow-shaped leaves of S. sagittifolia
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  S. latifolia flowers
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  S. trifolia bulbs

Taxonomy

Species

As of December 2023 accepted species include:

1. Sagittaria aginashii Makino – Japan, Korea, Primorye
2. Sagittaria ambigua J.G.Sm. – Missouri Arrowhead – from Oklahoma to Indiana
3. Sagittaria australis (J.G.Sm.) Small – Appalachian Arrowhead – southeastern US from Louisiana to Florida and as far north as Iowa and New Jersey
4. Sagittaria brevirostra Mack. & Bush – Shortbeak Arrowhead – central US (Great Plains, Mississippi and Ohio Valleys, Great Lakes); also Virginia and Saskatchewan; naturalized in California
5. Sagittaria calycina Engelm. – Central & S. U.S.A. to N. Mexico.
6. Sagittaria chapmanii (J.G.Sm.) C.Mohr – from Texas to the Carolinas
7. Sagittaria cristata Engelm – Crested arrowhead – Great Lakes region
8. Sagittaria cuneata E.P.Sheld. – Wapato, Northern Arrowhead, Swamp Potato – most of Canada including Yukon and Northwest Territories; Alaska; western and northeastern US
9. Sagittaria demersa J.G.Sm. – Chihuahuan arrowhead – New Mexico, northeastern Mexico
10. Sagittaria engelmanniana J.G.Sm. – Engelmann's arrowhead – eastern US from Mississippi to Vermont
11. Sagittaria fasciculata E.O.Beal – Bunched Arrowhead – North and South Carolina
12. Sagittaria filiformis J.G.Sm. – Threadleaf Arrowhead – eastern US from Alabama to Maine
13. Sagittaria graminea Michx. – Grassy Arrowhead, Grass-leaved Arrowhead – Cuba; much of eastern and central US; eastern Canada; naturalized in Washington State and in Vietnam
14. Sagittaria guayanensis Kunth – Guyanese Arrowhead – widespread across Latin America, the West Indies, China, India, Southeast Asia; introduced into Louisiana
15. Sagittaria intermedia Micheli in A.L.P.P.de Candolle & A.C.P.de Candolle – Greater Antilles, Colombia, southern Mexico
16. Sagittaria isoetiformis J.G.Sm. – Quillwort Arrowhead – Cuba, from Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Carolinas
17. Sagittaria kurziana Glück – Springtape or Strap-leaf Sagittaria – Florida; naturalized in Mariana Islands
18. Sagittaria lancifolia L. – Bulltongue Arrowhead – southeastern US from Texas to Delaware; West Indies; Latin America from southern Mexico to Brazil
19. Sagittaria latifolia Willd. – Duck-potato, Broad-leaved Arrowhead, Wapato – widespread across most of North America, the West Indies and northern South America; naturalized in Hawaii, the western Himalayas and parts of Europe
20. Sagittaria lichuanensis J.K.Chen, X.Z.Sun & H.Q.Wang – southern China
21. Sagittaria longiloba Engelm. ex J.G. Sm. – Longbarb Arrowhead – southern Great Plains, Arizona, New Mexico, California, Mexico, Nicaragua, Venezuela
22. Sagittaria × lunata C.D.Preston & Uotila – Sweden, Finland, northern Russia (S. natans × S. sagittifolia)
23. Sagittaria macrocarpa J.G.Sm. – Large-fruited Arrowhead – North and South Carolina
24. Sagittaria macrophylla Zucc. – Papa de agua – Mexico
25. Sagittaria montevidensis Cham. & Schltdl. – California Arrowhead – widespread across much of US, Mexico and South America
26. Sagittaria natans Pall. – widespread across northern Europe and Asia from Sweden to Kamchatka; Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Japan, Korea
27. Sagittaria papillosa Buchenau – Nipplebract Arrowhead – Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Oklahoma
28. Sagittaria planitiana G.Agostini – Brazil, Venezuela
29. Sagittaria platyphylla (Engelm.) J.G.Sm. – Delta Arrowhead, Delta Duck-potato – south-central US with scattered populations in southeast, the Ohio Valley and Washington State; also Mexico and Panama; naturalized in South Australia, Italy, Java, Caucasus
30. Sagittaria potamogetifolia Merr. – southern China
31. Sagittaria pygmaea Miq. – Pygmy arrowhead – China, Japan, Korea, Himalayas, Thailand, Vietnam
32. Sagittaria rhombifolia Cham. – Costa Rica; widespread across much of South America
33. Sagittaria rigida Pursh. – Canadian Arrowhead – Canada from Quebec to Saskatchewan; common in northeastern and north-central US from Arkansas and Nebraska east to Virginia and New England; scattered populations in California, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington State; naturalised in Great Britain
34. Sagittaria sagittifolia L. – Arrowhead – widespread across most of Europe; Siberia, Caucasus, Turkey
35. Sagittaria sanfordii Greene – Valley Arrowhead – endemic to California
36. Sagittaria secundifolia Kral – Little River Arrowhead – Georgia and Alabama
37. Sagittaria siamaginashi Shiga & K.Itoh – Myanmar to Thailand
38. Sagittaria spatulata (J.G.Sm.) Buchenau - New Brunswick to Maryland.
39. Sagittaria sprucei Micheli in A.L.P.P.de Candolle & A.C.P.de Candolle – Colombia, Peru, Venezuela, northern Brazil
40. Sagittaria subulata L. Buchenau – Narrow-leaved Arrowhead – eastern US from Louisiana to Massachusetts; naturalized in Great Britain, Azores and Java
41. Sagittaria tengtsungensis H.Li – Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, Yunnan
42. Sagittaria teres S.Watson – Slender Arrowhead – northeastern US
43. Sagittaria trifolia L. – Threeleaf Arrowhead – widespread across much of Asia including Siberia, China, Japan, India, Iran, Indonesia, Philippines, etc.; also Ukraine and European Russia; naturalized in Fiji and Polynesia
44. Sagittaria weatherbiana Fernald –Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia

Deprecated

• Echinodorus palaefolius (Nees & Mart.) J.F.Macbr. (as S. palaefolia Nees & Mart.)
• Limnophyton obtusifolium (L.) Miq. (as S. obtusifolia L.)
• Wiesneria triandra (Dalzell) Micheli (as S. triandra Dalzell)

Etymology

The genus comes from the Latin word sagittārius, meaning 'pertaining to arrows', owing to the leaf shape of many species.

Uses

Tuber crisps (chips)

Many species have edible roots, prized for millennia as a reliable source of starch and carbohydrates, even during the winter. Some are edible raw, though are less bitter when cooked. They can be harvested by hand or by treading the mud in late fall or early spring, causing light root tubers to float to the surface. The plants are easy to propagate by replanting the roots.

Native American peoples such as the Algonquian, Omaha, Pawnee, and Winnebago used the tubers for food, prepared by boiling or roasting. They were also planted and eaten in China.

In culture

Other names are Pshitola (Dakota), Si" (Omaha-Ponca), Si-poro (Winnebago) and Kirit (Pawnee), 'cricket' (from the likeness of the tuber to the form of a cricket); known also as kits-hat, 'standing in water', the tuber being termed kirit.

Sagittaria is mentioned in the Omaha myths "Ishtinike and the Four Creators" and "How the Big Turtle Went to War".

In 1749, Peter Kalm mentioned Sagittaria as a food plant among the Algonquian peoples:

Katniss is another Indian name of a plant, the root of which they were likewise accustomed to eat, ... It grows in low, muddy, and very wet ground. The root is oblong, commonly an inch and a half long, and one inch and a quarter broad in the middle; but some of the roots have been as big as a man’s fists. The Indians either boiled this root or roasted it in hot ashes. ... Their katniss is an arrow-head or Sagittaria, and is only a variety of the Swedish arrow-head or Sagittaria sagittifolia, for the plant above the ground is entirely the same, but the root under ground is much greater in the American than in the European.

American explorers Lewis and Clark used arrowhead tubers to survive the winter of 1805–1806.

Katniss Everdeen of the Hunger Games franchise was named after Sagittaria.

Further reading

• Rataj, K., Annot. Zool. Bot. (Bratislava) 76:1–31 (1972); 78:1–61 (1972)
• Staff of the L. H. Bailey Hortorium, Hortus Third, pg. 993

External links

• Plants for a Future
• The Arrowheads
• Edibility of Sagittaria: Identification and edible parts of Sagittaria.