Damasonium

Damasonium is a genus of three to five species of flowering plants in the family Alismataceae, commonly known as starfruit and (older name) thrumwort. The genus has a subcosmopolitan but very patchy distribution.

They are aquatic perennial herbaceous plants growing in shallow water or mud beside ponds. The leaves are all basal, floating, or aerial in plants on pond margins. The flowers are hermaphrodite, in one to many whorls, in umbels, racemes or panicles; they have six stamens, and six to nine carpels arranged in a whorl, connate at the base, each with two to many ventral ovules; The styles are terminal. The fruit is a whorl of follicles; the follicles are laterally compressed, stellately radiating, with a more or less elongated apical beak.


Species
Damasonium californicum is a species of perennial wildflower in the water plantain family which is known by the common name California damasonium. This is a plant of wet environments in the western United States from California to Idaho. It is a resident of ponds, riversides, and vernal pools. This is a tough-stemmed plant which may live submersed in water or erect on mud or moist soils. It has long, narrow leaves consisting of a thin blade at the end of a long petiole. The inflorescence yields a flower at the end of each of several long peduncles. The flower has three white or pink petals, each with toothed or fringed ends and sometimes a yellow spot at the base. At the center are six short stamens. After the flower withers the fruits develop into flat, beaked achenes, several achenes gathered into a star-shaped bunch.

Damasonium minus

Damasonium alisma

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