This lifeform is widespread in North America. This lifeform is found in freshwater such as lakes or rivers. This lifeform is common in suitable environments.

American or Long-Leaved Pondweed (Potamogeton americanus, or more recently under the synonym of P. nodosus.) is found throughout most of North American from New Brunswick to California and Washington to the West Indies. This species can be separated from most other Pondweeds by the following characteristics: two different kinds of leaves; a long narrow leaf underwater which may be from four to twelve inches long; a smaller wider floating leaf which may be from two to six inches long.

The Petioles are usually quite long on the floating leaves from 2-8 inches, and the underwater leaves have petioles from 1-5 inches long. The peduncles (branch that supports the flowers) are thicker than the stem, and are usually 1 to 5 inches long. In Illinois this plant has been observed growing in water from about 1 to 6 feet deep. The plant also spreads by underground runners that are about 2 inches under the bottom.

Genus Potamogeton (pondweeds) is the largest genus in the pond weed family having about ninety species of which fifty are native to greater North America. (These 50 species have been changed to 39 full species, 28 natural hybrids, and 7 subspecies.)  The pondweeds have a well-earned reputation for being difficult to  identify correctly.  Winterringer's Aquatic Plants of Illinois is helpful in analyzing twenty  of the species that are found in the midwestern United States.  Several species of pondweeds have two different kinds of leaves.  There are long, narrow, submerged leaves and wider, floating leaves.  Although experts rely on the seed shape for precise identification, the shape and size of the floating leaves and submerged leaves, in conjunction with the length and width of the seed stem (peduncle), will frequently give a good identification.

Pond Weed Family (Potamogetonaceae) is a small family of marine and freshwater plants. Older works show this family with less than ten genera and about 125 species.

In older works, this family was called either Potamogetonaceae or Zannichelliaceae. Griffiths now shows only two genera and 90 species in the Potamogetonaceae family. Part of the reason for this difference is that some modern works separate the Zanichella genus into its own family, Zannichelliaceae, which now contains four genera and seen species.

Another confusing issue is that some modern works separate the Ruppia genus into its own family, Ruppiaceae.

Order Helobiae is a mixed assemblage of mostly aquatic plant families. Included here are the pondweeds, Sagittaria, eel-grass, and water plantains.

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.