PONDWEED  , a popular name for Potamogeton natans, a

cosmopolitan aquatic plant found in ponds, lakes and ditches, with broad, more or less oblong-ovate, olive-green, floating leaves . The name is also applied to other species of Potamogeton, one of the characteristic genera of lakes, ponds and streams all over the world, but more abundant in temperate regions . It is the principal genus of the natural order of Monocotyledons Potamogetonaceae, and contains plants with slender branched stems, and submerged and translucent, or floating and opaque, alternate or opposite leaves, often with membranous united stipules . The small flowers are borne above the water in which the English is a 16th-century adaptation, is formed from national forces . In 1789, when Poland was threatened by the poing, fist, the clenched. hand in which the weapon is grasped. armed intervention of Russia, he was appointed commander of (See DAGGER.) the Ukraine division at Braclaw on Bug .