Sagittaria lancifoliaL.

bulltongue arrowhead

WFO wfo-0000736828 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Sagittaria lancifolia, photographed by Leila Dasher
fig. a Leila Dasher, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-11 / obs. 196995916

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.

The specimen a real sheet, in a real collection

Herbarium
The New York Botanical Garden
Accession
393818
Filed as
Sagittaria lancifolia subsp. lancifolia
Det. by
R. R. Haynes; L. B. Holm-Nielsen 1985-01-01
Collected
J. C. de Moraes Vasconcelos 1959-10-18
Origin
BR
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC BY 4.0)

A real pressed plant, in a real collection, under the accession number above. Not an illustration of one. The holding institution does not serve this sheet’s image to third parties, so there is no photograph here. The record is real and the link goes to it. Where we hold no openly licensed sheet for a species this section is simply absent, and where a sheet never recorded who determined it, that field stays empty rather than being filled in. Roughly half of all herbarium sheets never recorded a determiner, which is ordinary.

Native range 37 botanical countries

Regions where Sagittaria lancifolia is native: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Mexico Gulf, Mexico Southeast, Mexico Southwest, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Bahamas, Belize, Brazil North, Brazil Northeast, Brazil South, Brazil Southeast, Cayman Is., Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Panamá, Puerto Rico, Suriname, Venezuela, Windward Is. AlabamaFloridaGeorgiaLouisianaMarylandMexico GulfMexico SoutheastMexico SouthwestMississippiNorth CarolinaSouth CarolinaVirginiaBelizeBrazil NorthBrazil NortheastBrazil SouthBrazil SoutheastColombiaCosta RicaCubaDominican RepublicEcuadorEl SalvadorFrench GuianaGuatemalaGuyanaHaitiHondurasJamaicaNicaraguaPanamáPuerto RicoSurinameVenezuela BahamasCayman Is.Windward Is.
Native distribution of Sagittaria lancifolia, 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. Regions too small to draw at this scale are marked with a dot.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Bahamas BAH SOUTHERN AMERICA
Belize BLZ
Brazil North BZN
Brazil Northeast BZE
Brazil South BZS
Brazil Southeast BZL
Cayman Is. CAY
Colombia CLM
Costa Rica COS
Cuba CUB
Dominican Republic DOM
Ecuador ECU
El Salvador ELS
French Guiana FRG
Guatemala GUA
Guyana GUY
Haiti HAI
Honduras HON
Jamaica JAM
Nicaragua NIC
Panamá PAN
Puerto Rico PUE
Suriname SUR
Venezuela VEN
Windward Is. WIN
Alabama ALA NORTHERN AMERICA
Florida FLA
Georgia GEO
Louisiana LOU
Maryland MRY
Mexico Gulf MXG
Mexico Southeast MXT
Mexico Southwest MXS
Mississippi MSI
North Carolina NCA
South Carolina SCA
Virginia VRG

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 617 in flower of 701 examined

Proportion of examined Sagittaria lancifolia in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 43 49 88% 76% to 94%
Feb 37 43 86% 73% to 93%
Mar 64 77 83% 73% to 90%
Apr 62 72 86% 76% to 92%
May 67 76 88% 79% to 94%
Jun 44 48 92% 80% to 97%
Jul 37 39 95% 83% to 99%
Aug 44 57 77% 65% to 86%
Sep 66 73 90% 82% to 95%
Oct 36 39 92% 80% to 97%
Nov 70 77 91% 82% to 96%
Dec 47 51 92% 82% to 97%

Peak flowering in Jul. Each bar is the share of Sagittaria lancifolia 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. 617 of 701 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 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.

When it blooms, where you are 2 states

Peak flowering moves by 3 months across these states. A national average would be the wrong answer to a local question, so each of these is computed only from observations made in that state.

StatePeaksObservations in flower
Alabama Jul 54
Florida Oct 358

Where it actually grows measured, from 2,041 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 5.8 °C 11.8 °C 17.1 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 29.2 °C 31.3 °C 32.3 °C
Annual rainfall 1,263 mm 1,396 mm 1,660 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 134 mm 185 mm 337 mm

It is barely found anywhere that freezes. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 2,041 research-grade observations of Sagittaria lancifolia that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.

This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one. Climate from CHELSA V2.1 (Karger et al. 2017); occurrences from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 14 synonyms

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.

  • Drepachenia lancifolia Raf.
  • Sagittaria acutifolia L.f.
  • Sagittaria angustifolia Lindl.
  • Sagittaria falcata Pursh
  • Sagittaria lancifolia var. angustifolia (Lindl.) Griseb.
  • Sagittaria lancifolia var. falcata J.G.Sm.
  • Sagittaria lancifolia var. major Micheli
  • Sagittaria lancifolia var. media Micheli
  • Sagittaria ovata Redouté
  • Sagittaria plantaginifolia M.Martens & Galeotti
  • Sagittaria pugioniformis L.
  • Sagittaria pugioniformis var. acutifolia (L.f.) Kuntze
  • Sagittaria sellowiana Kunth
  • Sagittaria trachysepala Engelm. ex Micheli

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.