The flowering aquatic plants to which most of us refer collectively as water-lilies were among the first splashes of beauty that man noticed on this earth. Earlier plant forms there were in profusion, but the process of evolution seems to have favored water-lilies with quick development to their ultimate form. Remains of tropical water-lilies have been found in pre-Ice Age stratas in Europe, and these remains show the early types to have been of the same basic form that persists among tropical species today.

The dimmest beginnings of art and writing include the water-lily as well as closely related members of the botanical family. To the furled sepals of the lotus bud, historians trace the design of the Ionic capital and the basic pattern of the Greek fret or meander. Doubled, the meander forms the swastika, certainly one of man's earliest written symbols, representing good and evil in one part of the world, darkness and light in another, life and death, male and female, peace and conflict to the peoples of the world. The cornucopia, that universal and ancient symbol of fertility and abundance, is thought by some scholars to have been derived from the filled-to-bursting seed pods of the lotus, which it resembles.

The family tree of the water-lilies is confusing, made so principally by a score of early plant anatomists, horticulturists, and botanists, each of whom bent it this way and that to satisfy his personal bias in classification.

Under Ranales, the family in which we are interested principally, is the Nymphaeaceae-the Water-Lily Family. The varied genera which spring from Nymphaeaceae include almost all the flowering aquatic plants which have ever been called water-lily or lotus. From this point on in the classification system, we no longer speak of all water flowers as water-lilies.


One inferior genus of the family is called Nuphar, plants commonly known as cow lilies, spatter docks, and yellow pond lilies. Another genus is Victoria, the most regal and spectacular of all flowering aquatics. Another is Nelumbo, from which springs the lotus species.

We shall discuss all of the genera later. At the moment, let us consider the most colorful and varied of all genera in the Water-Lily Family, the genus called Nymphaea. To it belong all of the true water-lilies.

Nymphaea are divided into two general sections, under which five important subgenera are listed. The groupings are based largely on structural differences in the blossoms and on habits of growth and bloom. In this book we are not concerned with minute botanical differences, but blooming habits are important to us.

The first section, the Apocarpiae, includes the subgenera Anecphya and Brachyceras. These are the tender or tropical water-lilies that bloom in the daytime.

The second section, Syncarpiae, includes the other three subgenera -Castalia, Lotos, and Hydrocallis. The Castalia are the hardy waterlilies. The other two are the tropical water-lilies that bloom at night. Water-lilies that spring from the subgenus Lotos are not to be confused with flowers of the genus Nelumbo, the basic form of which is the Hindu or Sacred Lotus of India, the true lotus. The situation becomes even more complex when a water-lily species called lotus (from which many varieties have been obtained) is attributed to the subgenus Lotos. It may help to think of the water-lily species called lotus, and of the varieties obtained from it, as lotus-like water-lilies.