Sagittaria brevirostraMack. & Bush

shortbeak arrowhead

WFO wfo-0000736734 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Sagittaria brevirostra, photographed by Robert Hoard
fig. a Robert Hoard, CC0 1.0 / 2020-09-13 / obs. 95010240

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Native range 23 botanical countries

Regions where Sagittaria brevirostra is native: Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma, Saskatchewan, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Wisconsin AlabamaArkansasColoradoIllinoisIndianaIowaKansasKentuckyLouisianaMichiganMinnesotaMississippiMissouriNebraskaNew MexicoOhioOklahomaSaskatchewanSouth DakotaTennesseeTexasVirginiaWisconsin
Native distribution of Sagittaria brevirostra, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Alabama ALA NORTHERN AMERICA
Arkansas ARK
Colorado COL
Illinois ILL
Indiana INI
Iowa IOW
Kansas KAN
Kentucky KTY
Louisiana LOU
Michigan MIC
Minnesota MIN
Mississippi MSI
Missouri MSO
Nebraska NEB
New Mexico NWM
Ohio OHI
Oklahoma OKL
Saskatchewan SAS
South Dakota SDA
Tennessee TEN
Texas TEX
Virginia VRG
Wisconsin WIS

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Flowering 69 in flower of 112 examined

Proportion of examined Sagittaria brevirostra in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 0 0 too few examined
Feb 0 0 too few examined
Mar 0 0 too few examined
Apr 0 0 too few examined
May 0 0 too few examined
Jun 1 1 too few examined
Jul 14 14 100% 78% to 100%
Aug 43 50 86% 74% to 93%
Sep 11 41 27% 16% to 42%
Oct 0 5 0% 0% to 43%
Nov 0 1 too few examined
Dec 0 0 too few examined

Peak flowering in Jul. Each bar is the share of Sagittaria brevirostra observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 69 of 112 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 8 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 1 synonym

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Sagittaria engelmanniana subsp. brevirostra (Mack. & Bush) Bogin

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
  3. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.