Machaerocarpus californicus is found from southern Oregon south into the Sacramento Valley of California. This is found in shallow water or associated mud usually below 5,000 feet in elevation. Typical waters can be found in woods, sagebrush, and grasslands. This perennial herb can have multiple flower stems normally less than 18 inches in height. The leaf blades are normally between 1 and 3 inches in length. The somewhat oval blades are found on long petioles. The flowers can be white or pink. The flower petals are unusual in that they have a frayed or jagged appearance at the end of the petals.

There is only species of Machaerocarpus found in North America. This species is found from Oregon south into Californina, and possibly east into Nevada. The leaves can be erect or floating. This genus is not well known.

Water Plantain Family (Alismaceae equal Alismataceae) is small family with approximately one hundred species. These species are spread across about 11 genera. There are five genera with 37 species growing in greater North America including Greenland, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. These are perennial or annual swamp or aquatic herbs. Most species have medium sized flowers with 3 petals.

Order Helobiae is a mixed assemblage of mostly aquatic plant families. Included here are the pondweeds, Najas, frog's-bit, eel-grass, and water plantains (Sagittaria). This is an arbitrary collection of families used primarily to reduce the number of orders. Some species are totally submerged while others live in shallow water with leaves and flowers above the water line. Some species have both submerged and floating leaves.

Monocots are a large group of plants usually characterized by having leaves with parallel veins and a seed with a single shell. Most flowers are created with multiples of three. In the older botany texts, the Monocots were considered more primitive than the Dicots. However, many recent authors have placed the Monocots as an offshoot of the primitive Dicots. Here they are placed before the Dicots.

In l951 Lawrence at Cornell published a very detailed plant taxonomy for vascular plants. His taxonomy is very useful as he provided both a detailed explanation and also covered many genera. In the l990s Cronquist published a new plant taxonomy that improved the older taxonomy based on new knowledge. About the same time, Dahlgren published a different taxonomy.

Seed plants (Phylum Embryophyta) are generally grouped into one large phylum containing three major classes: the Gymnosperms, the Monocots, and the Dicots. (Some scientists separate the Gymnosperms into a separate phylum and refer to the remaining plants as flowering plants or Angiospermae.)

For North American counts of the number of species in each genus and family, the primary reference has been John T. Kartesz, author of A Synonymized Checklist of the Vascular Flora of the United States, Canada, and Greenland (1994). The geographical scope of his lists include, as part of greater North America, Hawaii, Alaska, Greenland, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands.

Kartesz lists 21,757 species of vascular plants comprising the ferns, gymnosperms and flowering plants as being found in greater North America (including Alaska, Hawaii, Greenland, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.

There are estimates within the scientific world that about half of the listed North American seed plants were originally native with the balance being comprised of Eurasian and tropical plants that have become established.

Plant kingdom contains a large variety of different organisms including mosses, ferns, and seed plants. Most plants manufacture their energy from sunlight and water. Identification of many species is difficult in that most individual plants have characteristics that have variables based on soil moisture, soil chemistry, and sunlight.

Because of the difficulty in learning and identifying different plant groups, specialists have emerged that study only a limited group of plants. These specialists revise the taxonomy and give us detailed descriptions and ranges of the various species. Their results are published in technical journals and written with highly specialized words that apply to a specific group.

On the other hand, there are the nature publishers. These people and companies undertake the challenging task of trying to provide easy to use pictures and descriptions to identify those species.

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