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Rooted plant, sometimes with creeping stems. Leaves usually dimorphic, the sub-merged linear and grass-like, the aerial with more or less expanded blade lanceolate to oblong, often narrowly so, 1-5 cm. long, base short-cuneate, rounded or shallowly cordate; petiole elongate, stipulate. Spathe sub-ensheathing the inflorescence, caudate, 1.5-4.0 cm. long. Inflorescence of a single flower; flower 2-6 cm. long, tube 1-4 cm. long, blue or whitish; anthers lanceolate, bi-lobed, almost basifixed; filaments glabrous, adnate to the perianth tube; style elongate, slightly longer than the tube, and with an expanded, tufted stigma. Ovary 1-celled, many-ovulate; capsule oblong, narrow, 1-2 cm. long; seed about 0.4 x 0.8 mm., brown, about 10-ridged longitudinally, one ridge enlarged; seed-coat striated horizontally.
Aerial lvs emersed, the blade 1–5 cm long and about half as wide, oblong to ovate, acutish, with cuneate to truncate base; petioles to 1.5 dm; spathe folded, abruptly caudate-acuminate, 1–4.5 cm, enclosing 1 fl; fls purple to white, the perianth-tube 1.5–4.5 cm, the lobes 5–15 mm, about equally spreading, the 3 upper ones basally yellow; stamens subequal, with straight filaments, the lateral ones yellow, the central one purple or white; style glabrous; 2n=14. In shallow water at the edges of ponds and ditches, or wholly emersed on mud; Mississippi R. drainage from Ky. to Io. and S.D., s. to S. Amer.; also Calif. to Ariz. and w. Mex.
