SAGITTARIA  ARROWHEAD, WAPATO  Alismataceae (Water Plantain family). 

The arrowheads produce tubers that were a prime starchy food for the First Nations of North and Central America until the potato arrived from Peru in the18th century. 

We offer Sagittaria latifolia, the most widespread of the many species in this genus of  wetland perennials.  This plant prefers silt or clay mud (not organic soil) and shallow  water. Its tubers, when steamed or roasted, are said to taste nutty and sweet. 

Sagittaria can absorb large amounts of toxic heavy metals from its environment. This makes it useful in soil remediation, but dangerous to eat if  collected from polluted waterways. 

Wapato ~ pronounced WApato ~ a common name for this plant, is a word from Chinook Jargon, the old  West Coast trading pidgin. Wapato seems to have referred not only to arrowhead tubers, but to the edible, starchy,  underground storage parts of many plants ~ potato tubers, camas bulbs, and so on. We are indebted for this information to Terry Spurgeon, a British Columbia archeologist who has made a special study of wapato.  

Photograph © Paige Woodward

Photograph by Brother Alfred Brousseau, © St. Mary's College of California  

Sagittaria latifolia Wildenow. Wapato. Duck potato. Indian potato. Swamp potato. Arrowhead.  Wide, arrow-shaped leaves rise in spring; white flowers with a golden eye bloom in early fall; the leaves soon die down and the tubers,  ranging in size from marble to golfball, were traditionally harvested from early October to late April. Ducks, geese, otters and muskrats also relish the tubers; waterfowl eat the seeds. Sagittaria latifolia is native to much of N America, Guatemala, Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela. Our stock descends from Fraser Valley and Vancouver Island populations. In the wild, this plant thrives in moving water whose level fluctuates frequently and gently, as in tidal estuaries. To our surprise, it also thrives in the still pond in our display garden. Height 20-90 cm (8-35"). Zone 5, possbly colder.  

Tuber (Fall shipping only). $2.00