1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Frog-bit

FROG-BIT, in botany, the English name for a small floating herb known botanically as Hydrocharis Morsus-Ranae, a member of the order Hydrocharideae, a family of Monocotyledons. The plant has rosettes of roundish floating leaves, and multiplies like the strawberry plant by means of runners, at the end of which new leaf-rosettes develop. Staminate and pistillate flowers are borne on different plants; they have three small green sepals and three broadly ovate white membranous petals. The fruit, which is fleshy, is not found in Britain. The plant occurs in ponds and ditches in England and is rare in Ireland.