Plants slender, grasslike, limp, to 0.6 m; leaves and inflorescences floating or, when stranded, more or less erect. Leaves limp in water, unkeeled, flat, 0.04--0.6 m  2--6(--10) mm; leaves of stranded plants shorter, firmer. Inflorescences: rachis unbranched, flexuous; bracts ascending, basally inflated; pistillate heads 1--3, axillary, not contiguous, sessile or most proximal short-peduncled (often long-peduncled in Alaska and nw Canada), 0.5--1.2 cm diam. in fruit; staminate head 1 or apparently so, terminal, not contiguous with distalmost pistillate head. Flowers: tepals without subapical dark spot, erose; stigmas 1, lance-ovate. Fruits dark greenish or brownish, subsessile, body ellipsoid to obovoid, not faceted, barely or not constricted at equator, 2--4  1--1.5 mm, tapering to beak; beak curved, 0.5--1.5 mm; tepals attached at base, reaching about to equator. Seeds 1. 2n = 30. Flowering summer--fall (Jun--Sep southwestward, Jul--Aug northward). Cool, quiet, slightly acid to somewhat basic waters of bays, pools, ditches, and peat bogs, usually in shallow water but sometimes to 60 cm depth, where less floriferous, abundant in its northern range, less so southward; 0--3500 m; St. Pierre and Miquelon; Alta., B.C., Man., N.B., Nfld. and Labr., N.W.T., N.S., Nunavut, Ont., P.E.I., Que., Sask., Yukon; Alaska, Calif., Colo., Conn., Idaho, Ill., Ind., Maine, Mass., Mich., Minn., Mont., N.H., N.Y., Oreg., Pa., R.I., Utah, Vt., Wash., Wis., Wyo.; circumboreal (not in Greenland). This species has long been known as Sparganium minimum, but although the correct name is S. natans (C. D. K. Cook 1985). The leaves of Sparganium natans are thinner and more translucent than those of the similar S. hyperboreum, and they lack the yellowish cast of that species. Its distalmost pistillate head is not contiguous with the staminate head, as is sometimes the case in S. hyperboreum, and its beaked fruit also distinguishes it from that species. See the discussion under S. hyperboreum for a description of S. hyperboreum  S. natans.

STEMS: 1 8( 10) dm long, slender, submersed and floating, or weakly suberect, not obviously branched. LEAVES 1 8( 10) dm long, (2 )3 6( 8) mm wide, about as long as the inflorescence, flat, without an evident keel, usually flaccid, dark green. INFLORESCENCE: simple, rarely over 6 cm long, the upper heads solitary, staminate, or with both staminate and pistillate flowers; lowermost heads pistillate or mixed, 1 3 in upper axils, 0.8 1.5 cm in diam. when mature, on slender pedicels 1 6 cm long. STAMINATE FLOWERS: perianth scales oblanceolate, 1 1.2 mm long, the apex essentially entire; anthers 0.3 0.6 mm long, 0.1 0.3 mm wide, broadly elliptic. PISTILLATE FLOWERS: perianth scales elliptic to cuneate spatulate, 1/2 2/3 as long as the achene; styles simple; stigma 0.8 1 mm long. sessile or stipitate, 3.5 5 mm long including the 1 1.5 mm long beak and stigma, ellipsoid to obovoid fusiform, the body somewhat centrally constricted; stipes, if present, 0.7 0.9 mm long. 2n = 30 NOTES: Shallow water of lakes: Coconino co.; ca. 2450 m (8200 ft.); Jun Sep (fr. Jul Oct); temperate n hemisphere. REFERENCES: Ricketson, Jon. 2001. Sparganiaceae. J. Ariz. – Nev. Acad. Sci. Volume 33(1).