This is a common herbaceous wetland species. It is native to most of the Americas from Canada to Argentina and to the West Indies. I'm sure that botanists gave this species the common name of "Dotted" because there are glandular circular depressions on the sepals of the tiny flowers and one needs a magnifying glass to see them. This is one of the fewer species of Smartweeds or Knotweeds that have the flowers sparsely distributed along the terminal spike-like raceme flower scapes rather than the more common condition of densely clustered flowers. Besides some beneficial insects pollinating its tiny flowers, the foliage is fed upon by the larvae of various butterfly and moth species, (as the Bronze Copper & the Purple Copper), sawflies, beetles, plant bugs, grasshoppers, and even by turtles. The nutritious seed of this and other wetland smartweeds are eaten by ducks, rails, and some songbirds. There probably are some conservation districts with their native plant nurseries that sell the seed for naturalizing wetland areas. One can use this species in a bog or pond kind of garden.

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