j o y
S T R A T I O T E S aloides.
Water Aloe, or Water Soldier,
P O L L A N D R I A Hexagynia.s
Gen. Char. Spatha of 2 leaves. Inner Calyx fape-
rior, in 3 fegments. Petals 3. Berry with 6 cells.
Spec. Char. Leaves fword-fhaped, channelled, with
a prominent rib, fringed with iharp prickles.
S y n . Stratiotes aloides. Linn. Sp. PI. 754. Hitdf. FI.
An. 236. With. Pot, Arr. 564. Relb. Cant. 207.
S. foliis Aloes, femine Iongo. Rail Syn. 290.
T H I S elegant aquatic is fcarcely found in any other part of
England than Lincolnthire, Cambridgefhire and Norfolk, where
it grows in the deep ditches of the fens, fometimes fo copioufly
as to occupy the furface entirely, to the exclufion of all other
plants. We received frelh fpecimens from Mr. William Skrimp-
fliire of Wifbeach. It flowers in July.
The Stratiotes is a ftoloniferous plant, and truly perennial,
though each root flowers but once, as in fome fpecies of Saxifraga,
Setnpervivum, See. The parent plant, rooted in the mud at the
bottom of the ditch after flowering, fends out buds of leaves at
the end of long runners, which rife to the furface, form roots,
bloflom, and then fink to the bottom, where they take hold of
the mud, fometimes ripen their feeds, and always become in
their turn the parents of another race of young offsets. The
leaves are all radical, forming a flar-like tuft, as in the Aloe and
Sedum tribe. Their fubftance is rigid, brittle, vafcular and
pellucid ; their teeth and points very {harp. Flower-ftalks fe-
veral, fhort, erect, fomewhat comprefied, frnooth, each bearing
one ere£t white'flower, arifing from a two-leaved {heath.
The ftamina are {hort, with awl-fliaped antherae. Germen above
the {heath, but much below the calyx. Styles 6, cloven, rifing
a little above the ftamina. Linnaeus in his manuferipts quotes
Bergen, Zinn and Fabricius as having found the flowers dioi-
cous, whereas he always obferved them to be hermaphrodite.
We have feen the ftamina apparently imperfect in fome flowers,
and the ftyles in others. The genus is very near akin to Hy~
drocharisy and perhaps ought to be united with it.