Marsilea owambo Doweld

Botswana, Ethiopia, Namibia, Zimbabwe.

Floating form: stipe 13-30 cm long, hairless to slightly hairy. Leaflets 7-17 × 5.5-15 mm, obovate to obdeltate, outer margin entire to slightly irregular, hairless. Dry land form: stipe up to 21 cm long. Leaflets 5-20 × 4-19 mm, narrowly obovate-obdeltate, outer margins irregularly incised, slightly hairy to hairless. Sporocarps: solitairy, buried in the soil; 3.5-7 mm long, 3-5 mm high, up to 3 mm thick; old specimens blackish, sub-rectangular to broadly elliptic in lateral view, vertical cross-section elliptic to rectangular, usually without a groove on upper and outer side; densely appressed hairy; lower tooth absent, upper tooth short, broadly conical, obtuse; pedicels up to c.10 mm long, straight or curved, growing downwards thus burying the sporocarp into the soil, hairless.

vera: verutum: javelin; which, like the sporocarps of this fern, pegs itself into the ground.