Description:

• Stoloniferous, perennial, aquatic herbs rooted in mud, submerged parts heavily covered with mucilaginous jelly, particularly younger parts
• Stem rhizomatous with floating or creeping runners bearing leaves
• Leaves alternate, long-petiolate, blades peltate, oval, floating, young leaves inrolled longitudinally, submerged; stipules 0
• Flowers bisexual, regular, solitary in leaf axils, long-pedicellate
• Sepals 3, free
• Petals 3, free, linear, hypogynous, purple, reflexed at anthesis, becoming erect in fruit
• Stamens 18-36; anthers extrorse, opening lengthwise
• Carpels 4-18, free, oblong-ovate; style very short or absent; stigma attenuated, entire; ovules 2 per carpel, parietal, pendulous
• Fruiting carpels indehiscent, beaked, 1 or 2 seeds
• Seeds globular, smooth or partly and minutely papillate, operculate, without aril; endosperm scanty, perisperm copious
• x = 10 (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Brasenia Schreb.
  • Schreber: 372 (1789)
  • Wild: 173 (1960)
  • Aston: 46 (1973)
  • Cook: 60 (1990)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 1: Brasenia schreberi J.F.Gmel., America, Australia and Africa
• Southern Africa: Very common in the Okavango Swamps (Botswana), one record from Loskop Dam (Mpumalanga)