by Nathaniel Lord Britton & Addison Brown, An Illustrated Flora of the Northern United States… (1913)
“ Marsh or aquatic plants with creeping rootstocks, fibrous roots and glabrous erect, terete stems. Leaves linear, flat, ensiform, striate, sheathing at the base. Flowers monoecious, densely crowded in terminal spikes, which are subtended by spathaceous, usually fugacious bracts, and divided at intervals by smaller bracts, which are caducous, the staminate spikes uppermost. ”
