XVI International Botanical Congess

Aquatic plants are common elements in Late Cretaceous and early Tertiary floras from North America. Floating aquatics are amenable to whole plant reconstruction due to their habit and taphonomy. Recent examples include Hydropteris, Trapago, and Limnobiophyllum. We present a whole plant reconstruction of the araceous plant Pistia corrugata. This plant is composed of floating rosettes of typically four inflated leaves with distinctive annulate venation. Whole plants and isolated leaves have been recovered from Campanian and Maastrichtian rocks in the northern Rockies. These aquatic depositional environments contain a variety of other aquatic taxa including: Nelumbium, cf. Nelumbo, Azolla, Paranymphaea, Haemanothophyllum, and Salvinia.