Marsilea farinosa subsp. farinosa

farinosa: powdery or with meal-like covering, alluding to the greyish appearance created by the hairs that cover much of the plant.

Floating form: stipe up to 20 cm long. Leaflets up to 10-21 × 11-22 mm, broadly obdeltate, almost hairless,outer margin rounded, wavy. Dry land form: stipe up to 12 cm long, with bristly hairs. Leaflets up to 4-15 × 3-15 mm, obdeltate, set with a mixture of hairs, becoming subglabrous with age, outer margins lobed. Sporocarps: in clusters, bean-shaped, 4.5-7 mm long, 2.5-4.5 mm high, 1.5-2.25 mm thick, upper side straight or concave, under and outer side rounded, vertical cross-section rectangular; lateral ribs 8-11, not conspicuous in mature specimens; lower tooth absent or very shallow hump, upper tooth present, sharply obtuse to acute. Sporocarp densely covered with hairs of 2 kinds, erect and flattened appressed, which in the dried state cause the powdery greyish appearance of the sporocarp. Sporocarps set at an angle of 90° to the pedicel; pedicels 8-15 mm, erect or arching, free, arising from the axil of the stipe, with bristly hairs.

Angola, Botswana, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, Zimbabwe.