Persicaria amphibia

Water smartweed

Family: Polygonaceae · Type: perennial · Native

Water smartweed is a California native perennial found in western and central California, excluding the eastern Desert Mountains, growing in shallow lakes, streams, and shores at elevations below 3,000 meters. Flowering from June to November, this plant produces pink to red flowers in terminal clusters 10 to 150 millimeters long. Growing with prostrate to erect stems 20 to 120 centimeters tall that can be glabrous or hairy, it has distinctive rhizomes or stolons. Its leaves are ovate to lance-oblong, 2 to 15 centimeters long with tapered or rounded bases and acute tips, featuring ocrea (leaf-like sheaths) 5 to 50 millimeters long in tan to dark-brown colors. The fruit is a small, lens-shaped, dark-brown structure 2 to 3 millimeters long.

Habitat: Shallow lakes, streams, shores

Bloom period: Jun-Nov

Elevation: < 3000 m

Bioregions: CA (exc e DMoj)

California counties: San Diego, San Bernardino, Glenn, Lake, Modoc, Sonoma, Butte, Calaveras, Del Norte, Inyo, Kings, Lassen, Madera, Orange, Riverside, Solano, Stanislaus, Mendocino, Napa, Siskiyou, Ventura, Contra Costa, El Dorado, Humboldt, Kern, Marin, Merced, Monterey, Nevada, Plumas, San Francisco, San Joaquin, San Luis Obispo, San Mateo, Santa Barbara, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Shasta, Tulare, Tuolumne, Yolo, Tehama, Mono, Colusa, Sierra, Placer, Sacramento, Alpine, Fresno, Sutter

Data from The California Species Project — 14,000+ California species with verified data from CNPS, CDFW, USFWS, Jepson eFlora, Cal-IPC, and more.