CROATIAN FLORA 2006 - WHITE WATER LILY

White water lily (Nymphaea alba L.) Family Nymphaeaceae English white water lily, white lotus German Weiße Seerose, Wasserrose French nénuphar blanc Italian ninfea comune The white water lily is a freshwater earth-like perennial without a stem. The rhizome spreading wide into several hard roots is laid horizontally in the muddy underwater soil and sends up shoots from which large, leathery and egg-shaped to circular leaves grow up some 30cm in length. All the mature leaves have shiny dark-green blades, purplish on the bottom and they float on the water surface (sometimes they may stand a bit above the water) split to long, tenacious stalks, round in cross section. Their subtly sweet-scented radially symmetric flowers are hermaphrodite (they have both male and female organs), individually they are large (up to 20 cm in diameter), open almost the whole day and often rise out of the water. Four greenish sepals are insignificant-looking compared to the 20-odd shiny white (rarely pink or reddish) petals that keep decreasing toward the centre, gradually turning into many stamens with yellow anthers and filaments. The ovary is sunken into the receptacle and is built of 12 to 20 ovules. The fruit with a multitude of seeds, nutlike and some 3 cm long ripens under water, and the elliptical seeds get distributed in the water where they are often food for fish. The water lily prefers sunny positions in stagnant and slow-moving waters of Europe, north-western Africa and the Middle East, where it blossoms from June to September. It can endure great yearly oscillations of the water depth and can survive in almost all entirely drained borders of marshes. Te water lily rhizome is sometimes used as food, boiled or fried (as it is rich in starch), and in the First World War it was used as the source of the anaesthetic nymphein. However, this plant has for a very long time been considered to be a highly appreciated decorative plant, so a great number of cultivars have been developed, in various colours and with different sizes of the flowers. Similarly to the yellow pond-lily, the water lily can also be found in watery habitats of Croatia, but by the drainage of these areas both species keep slowly vanishing.