This herbaceous community of aquatic macrophytes is closed related to the submergent marsh community. It represents a distinctive assemblage of highly specialized submersed, rosette-forming aquatic macrophytes that occur in northern Wisconsin in clear, deep, circumneutral lakes with extremely soft water. Bottom materials are usually sand, or occasionally gravel, and there is often an abrupt transition from submergent marsh to a forested upland shore. The aquatic plants grow at depths that range from the shallows at the beach line, to several meters. Characteristic species include American shoreweed (Littorella uniflora), seven-angled pipe-wort (Eriocaulon aquaticum), yellow hedge-hyssop (Gratiola aurea), aquatic lobelia (Lobelia dortmanna), dwarf water-milfoil (Myriophyllum tenellum), brown-fruited rush (Juncus pelocarpus), and quillworts (Isoetes spp.).
