This lifeform is found widely in Africa. This lifeform is found widely in Eurasia. This lifeform is found widely in the Indo-Australian region. This lifeform is widespread in North America. This lifeform is generally found in lakes. This lifeform is very common in suitable environments.

Common duckweed (Lemna minor) is found in ponds and stagnant waters in North America from coast to coast. The somewhat circular thallus, the floating green portion, of this tiny plant is less than 1/4 inch wide. This common floating plant covers many small ponds in North America.

Lemna genus (duckweed) is found worldwide.  There are about 15 species in this genus.  These are tiny floating plants that cover many small  ponds.  The thallus (floating green portion) is rounded with a single rootlet.  There are nine species established in greater North America.

Duckweeds (Family Lemnacea) are found in freshwater through much of the world. They are unusual in that they usually reproduce by budding and not through the normal flowering system that one would expect. There are about 30-40 species in this family organized into about six different genera. There are 19 species, organized into four genera, established in greater North America, including Alaska, Greenland, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands.

Order Spathiflorae is composed of two families: the Arum family and the Duckweed  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.