This lifeform is widespread in North America. This lifeform is found in freshwater such as lakes or rivers. This lifeform is widespread, but not common.

Broad fruited bur-reed (Sparganium eurycarpum) is found in marshes, near streams, and adjacent to ponds from Newfoundland to British Columbia and south to Florida, Missouri, Utah, and California. This branching, stout-stemmed plant, can grow to eight feet high. The leaves are slightly keeled beneath. The lower leaves can be from three to five feet long.

Sparganium genus contains marsh and pond plants that can be erect or floating.  The leaves are alternate and linear and sheathing at the base.

Burr Read Family (Sparganiaceae) has one genus with less than twenty-five species. There are now nine species growing in greater North America, including Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Hawaii, and Greenland. These nine species are frequently difficult to separate; seed shape is frequently used.

Pandales order is considered the most primitive of the Monocots. The order contains three families, including the well-known cattail family.

Monocots are a large group of plants usually characterized by having leaves with parallel veins and a seed with a single shell. Most flowers are created with multiples of three. In  the older botany texts, the Monocots were considered more primitive than the Dicots. However, many recent authors have placed the Monocots as an offshoot of the primitive Dicots. Here they are placed before the Dicots.

Seed plants (Phylum Embryophyta) are generally grouped into one large phylum containing three major classes: the Gymnosperms, the Monocots, and the Dicots. (Some scientists separate the Gymnosperms into a separate phylum and refer to the remaining plants as flowering plants or Angiospermae.)

For North American counts of the number of species in each genus and family, the primary reference has been John T. Kartesz, author of A Synonymized Checklist of the Vascular Flora of the United States, Canada, and Greenland (1994). The geographical scope of his lists include, as part of greater North America, Hawaii, Alaska, Greenland, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands.

Kartesz lists 21,757 species of vascular plants comprising the ferns, gymnosperms and flowering plants as being found in greater North America (including Alaska, Hawaii, Greenland, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands).

There are estimates within the scientific world that about half of the listed North American seed plants were originally native with the balance being comprised of Eurasian and tropical plants that have become established.

Plant kingdom contains a large variety of different organisms including mosses, ferns, and seed plants. Most plants manufacture their energy from sunlight and water. Identification of many species is difficult in that most individual plants have characteristics that have variables based on soil moisture, soil chemistry, and sunlight.

Because of the difficulty in learning and identifying different plant groups, specialists have emerged that study only a limited group of plants. These specialists revise the taxonomy and give us detailed descriptions and ranges of the various species.  Their results are published in technical journals and written with highly specialized words that apply to a specific group.

On the other hand, there are the nature publishers. These people and companies undertake the challenging task of trying to provide easy to use pictures and descriptions to identify those species.