Water lily, or nymphea: description, types and varieties, features of cultivation and care. Water lily (Water lily, Nymphaeum)

Water lily plant is very popular with owners of artificial reservoirs on personal plot. A variety of species for growing in a pond allow you to create unusual paintings from colorful buds located on magnificent flat leaves. They swim freely on the water surface of the reservoir. This creates an unusual look. The water lily plant can successfully winter right in the muddy soil of the bottom of the reservoir. During the summer, it accumulates in its tubers a large amount of starchy and sugary substances. This allows him to nourish the sprouts and rudiments of future stems. This material offers a detailed description of the water lily plant, which will allow you to choose suitable look for your pond. It also tells about the basics of agricultural technology of this culture.

Water lily plant or nymphea

The water lily nymphaeum can be called the queen of the water kingdom without embellishment - one has only to look at the smooth large leaves and huge flowers spread over the water. This magnificent plant has an interesting fate, because almost all of its most popular varieties were bred almost a hundred years ago by one person, Latour-Marliac. After his death, many specialists tried to continue his work. But the white water lily plant varieties they bred were not as successful as their predecessors. Latour-Marliac took with him the secret of the creation of this beautiful plant.

White water lily in Latin is called: nymphea candida (Nymphaea Candida), which translated into Russian means: white nymph.

From ancient Greece, legends about beautiful water girls, reminiscent of Slavic mermaids, who were called nymphs, have come down to us.

Legend says that such a fabulous nymph turned into a flower of a white water lily.

The shiny, glossy leaves of water lilies are covered with a wax coating on top and are not wetted by water. Broken petioles rise to the surface and float. Let's wonder why that is. Cut off a piece of petiole, look at the light. Noticeably large number of gaps.

Immerse the leaf of the water lily under the water and forcefully blow into the end of the petiole. A large number of small shiny air bubbles will appear on the surface of the leaf blade. The fact is that on the surface of the leaf there are up to 11 million tiny holes - stomata. They can be seen under a microscope on a thin section of the upper skin of the leaf. Air passes through the stomata to the underwater stem. In a strong magnifying glass, one can see bundles of needles on the cut of the leaf petiole in the corners of the air vessels. These needles protect the petioles of the water lily from being eaten by snails.

Pulling the water lily rhizome out of the water, one cannot help but notice the young leaves that do not reach the surface of the water - they are folded into a tube.

Look at the water lily plant in the photo illustrating an unusual appearance flower, a variety of colors of its buds:

What does a water lily look like (with photo)

The water lily can grow on a muddy, loose bottom of stagnant or slowly flowing waters. It happens that shallow reservoirs dry up, and then the floating leaves with long flexible petioles die off. But after some time, small leaves on strong upright petioles appear on the rhizome. You can see what a water lily looks like on any decorative pond, where decorative purpose this amazing plant is grown.

Under the action of the rays of the sun in the wide leaves of the water lily, starch is formed from air (carbon dioxide) and water. This starch turns into sugar, the solution of which descends along the petioles of the leaf to the rhizome. Here the sugar is converted back to starch and deposited in the rhizome. A particularly large supply of starch accumulates in the rhizome by autumn. In spring and early summer, these reserves of starch are spent on the growth of leaves, flowering and the formation of fruits.

The rhizome of the white water lily is the product from which flour can be obtained.

But at seven o'clock in the morning, the water lily flower bud will rise to the surface and open again under the rays of the sun. And the whole day the flower will turn towards the sun, and by the evening four brilliant sepals will tightly close the snow-white flower and it will sink into the water.

The world-famous Swedish botanist who lived in the 18th century, Carl Linnaeus, recognized the time by flowers. He even compiled "flower hours", "flora hours", - a list at what hours flowers open and close; during these hours, a white water lily was also included.

Pick a water lily flower and examine it. Which large flower! Measure its diameter. Outside - four sepals, they float on the water, and snow-white petals lie on them. There are many of them. Large from the edges, they become smaller and smaller towards the middle. Yellow tips appear on small petals, gradually turning into thin stamens with pollen sacs. In the middle is a pistil with a radiant stigma and a round ovary, similar to a jug or poppy box.

Tear off the sepals, petals and stamens of the flower, put them between the sheets of an unnecessary book and dry. When they dry, stick them in order of change on a sheet of paper and notice all the transitions from petals to stamens.

Such an observation of the water lily flower led the famous poet Wolfgang Goethe to discover the botanical law of the transformation, or metamorphosis, of the leaves of a plant. The calyxes, petals, stamens and carpels of the ovary of the pistil were formed from modified leaves.

See what the water lily looks like in the photo, which shows different types of plants during the budding and flowering period:

The ends of the petals of water lilies secrete honey. They are visited by beetles, flies and bees. Insects carry pollen from flower to flower by pollinating the pistils.

After pollination, the flower wilts and the fruit grows in the form of a multi-star berry with black seeds. Roasted water lily seeds can be consumed like coffee.

When the fruit rots, the seeds do not sink, but float, since in a white water lily they are surrounded by a whitish shell filled with air, while in a yellow one the flesh keeps the seeds on the surface of the water. A breeze will blow, charge the surface of the lake, and the water lily seeds will rush to the other shore. The shell of the white water lily seeds is also eaten by fish, which contribute to their distribution. The air from the shell gradually comes out, and then the seeds sink to the bottom. But often the seeds do not fall to the bottom of their native reservoir, but of some other, distant one. The fact is that the fruits of the water lily consist of a juicy, sticky and viscous mass, like dough. This fruit pulp is a favorite delicacy of water chickens. Seeds stick to the paws, beak and feathers of chickens and are carried by them to new reservoirs far away.

Water lily flower: description and photo

The water lily flower is a perennial, aquatic plant, with leathery, whole, green leaves lying on the surface of the water and large, solitary snow-white flowers with a pleasant aroma. The plant blooms at the end of June. All leaves of the plant are arranged in a spiral, while the underwater leaves are usually folded in the form of a cap, and the floating leaves are rounded and bent upward at the edges. Starting the description of the water lily, we note that the fruit of the plant is a multi-leaf, resembling a jug in its shape, ripening under water with seeds, which, in nature, are distributed by birds.

Reading the description of the water lily and looking at the photo, you can see that this plant is distinguished by its external grandeur and originality of buds, which is illustrated below:

The white water lily is one of the most characteristic representatives of the type of aquatic plants attached to the bottom of the reservoir and having leaves floating on the surface of the water. At a fairly considerable depth (2 - 4 meters) we can easily find the rhizome of this plant, which extends along the muddy bottom and is all covered with welts from old leaves; little new leaves develop on it every year. The rhizome is quite thick and contains a significant amount of farinaceous and tannins, giving it a rather characteristic taste. These properties of the rhizome led to the fact that in ancient times, in the era of piled buildings, it was eaten, and even now the native population of Eastern Siberia sometimes eats these rhizomes, and in famine and in Europe they eat them. However, in folk medicine, water lily rhizomes also have their uses. The rhizome gives rise to adventitious roots (the main root soon dies off during seed germination and does not develop further).

Look at the water lily flower in the photo, which shows the stages of development of an aquatic plant in a pond:

What are the leaves of a water lily

Starting a story about what water lilies are, it should be mentioned that already quite early in summer, in May, the rhizome gives rise to several leaves, which very quickly stretch upward and in adult form consist of a long cylindrical petiole, sometimes reaching 3-5 meters in length and ending with a plate almost rounded in general outline, but deeply notched on one side. This plate floats on the surface of the water, and it is the most important organ for the life of the plant, absorbing the gases necessary for the plant. The leaf blade of the water lily is an example of the best adaptation for life on the border of water and air. First of all, it is permeated, like the leaf petiole, with a wide network of air cavities; this makes it easier for her to swim on the surface of the water, not to mention other important advantages. About which leaves of a water lily are crucial, is described below.

At the same time, all vascular bundles through which the current flows nutrients, are accompanied by mechanical elements that make a flat sheet of a water lily sufficiently strong and resistant to wave shocks; you need a very strong excitement so that the leaf of the water lily is torn into pieces. However, the danger from excitement still exists for water lilies and egg-pods, and therefore in large reservoirs, large lakes, we meet these plants mainly in protected places: in small bays, bays, or under the protection of the outer belt of reeds and reeds.

We already see that for the absorption of the gases necessary for the water lily, the leaf blade floating on the water is almost the only source. Naturally, the upper surface of the floating leaf plate serves this purpose almost exclusively, since it is accessible to air, which contains all the gases necessary for the plant in more than water. Naturally, all the organs that serve to maintain communication between the internal parts of the plant and outside world, all stomata are located on the upper surface and, moreover, in enormous quantities - there are tens of millions of them on each leaf. At the same time, these stomata must be somehow protected, otherwise they will be flooded with water or covered with dust. For such protection, special hairs are used, which, as it were, as a veil or handkerchief, help protect the stomata from unwanted objects entering them. You can distinguish several genera of hairs on the leaves of water lilies and: firstly, rather long, segmented hairs that cover, sometimes quite densely, the young organs of the plant; secondly, star-shaped, the so-called trichoblasts, which develop inside the air cavities of the plant, and, finally, thirdly, small mucus-producing hairs that develop on the underside of the leaf blade and on flowers and secrete mucus that lubricates the plant. Since the leaf blade could still suffer from excess moisture and the stomata would be flooded with water, then the water lily developed another adaptation, thanks to which the upper surface of the leaf is not wetted by water: it is all covered with a layer of wax secreted by the leaf skin of the upper side of the plate.

Water lily plant leaf (with photo)

In very shallow reservoirs, along with the floating leaves of an aquatic plant, water lilies sometimes develop, as an exception, free standing aerial leaves. They are smaller, thick-skinned, rough, their air system is undeveloped, which indicates an approach to the type of ordinary air leaves. However, the underside of these leaves does not bear stomata, and this is a significant difference from ordinary aerial leaves. For the water lily, the return to a terrestrial way of life is a matter so forgotten that it was no longer able to develop a complete correspondence between the structure of these leaves and the air regime.

Let us now answer the question, how does a water lily absorb gases dissolved in it from the water at a time when the petiole has not yet reached the surface of the reservoir, and the stomata of the upper side of the floating leaf plate have not yet begun to act? For this purpose, special underwater leaves are used, which are long, thin, belt-like plates that absorb gases dissolved in water with their entire surface. After the formation of floating leaves, these underwater leaves die off and are no longer formed, since there is no need for them. In too fast flowing water or in stagnant water, but at too great depths, such leaves cannot be formed and therefore germinated plants must die; however, yellow capsules, even under such conditions, form submerged, narrow, ribbon-like leaves, with the help of which the plant provides itself with the opportunity to survive the early stage of development. These submerged leaves, which subsequently give way to ordinary floating leaves, represent one of the very illustrative "youthful forms of the plant," that is, those forms which the plant presents in the early stages of its life, in order to later form a more perfect form. Similar phenomena are not uncommon in the animal world, let us recall at least some amphibians, for example. newts, in which a larval form first develops, living in water, and then this form passes into an adult newt, already leading a terrestrial lifestyle. It is remarkable that the same reasons that prevent the appearance of floating leaves with stomata in the water lily and the egg capsule - the depth of the reservoir and the speed of the current - equally affect the transformation of the gill-breathing stages of amphibians into stages adapted to air respiration.

See what a water lily leaf looks like in the photo, which shows different forms this part of the plant:

Already in the first half of summer, water lilies begin to bloom. On the surface of the reservoir, among the floating leaves, oblong, rather large green buds appear one after another, which soon gradually open, and the sepals overlapping each other in a tiled pattern turn away in order to show a significant number of snow-white leaves inside, of which the outer ones have kind of petals. However, the further we move deeper into the water lily flower, studying its petals, the more their shape will change, the narrower they will become, and at the same time, the beginnings of pollen sacs will appear on their top, and then the anthers themselves. Thus, inside the flower we no longer have petals, but stamens, and in the whole flower of the white water lily we have one of the most striking examples of the so-called metamorphosis of plant organs, in this case gradual transition leaf-shaped organ, petal, stamen; the inner stamens no longer look like petals, they are filiform, orange-yellow. The middle of the flower is occupied by a pistil, which consists of a semi-lower single-celled ovary with many ovules and a stigma, divided into 8 - 10 - 12 several curved rays. With the development of the flower, the pistil first matures, until the stamens have yet formed pollen suitable for fertilization (this phenomenon is called proteogyny). Therefore, for fertilization, the assistance of insects is required, which are in the flower of the water lily in a small number for pollen, since the flowers of the white water lily do not secrete nectar. After fertilization, the petals of the water lily fall off, and one pistil remains, containing many fertilized ovules. Soon, however, the pedicel begins to lean to one side, and the gradually growing fruit sinks into the water, where it finally ripens. When the fruit ripens, in a white water lily, each seed is released separately and is soon brought to the surface of the reservoir, thanks to the air-bearing layer surrounding the seed; Gradually, however, water penetrates into this layer, and the seed is again immersed in water so that next spring it will germinate in the mud.

Water lily plant species

Our water lilies are representatives of the Nymphaeaceae family, which in tropical countries is much richer and more diverse than ours. This includes the famous majestic Victoria Regia, the beauty of the South American rivers, which is bred with considerable difficulty in the greenhouses of the largest botanical gardens in Europe.

In our North, the Nymphaeaceae family is represented by only two species of water lilies and egg capsules, which are easily distinguished from each other not only by the structure and color of the corolla, but also by the structure of the petiole and leaf blade, which can help identify the plant on an excursion if we we find only leaves floating on the water, as is often the case. On a transverse section of the petiole of a white water lily, we notice vascular fibrous bundles arranged in one ring, and in addition, one bundle in the center.

Observing and studying the white species of the water lily plant, we will pay attention to some structural features of their flower. The base of the calyx may be rounded or sharply quadrangular. In the first case, we have a real white water lily ( Nymphaea alba ), which usually has a completely yellow stigma of 12-20 rays and is found mainly in Central Europe, and in our country only in the western part of the country.

The common white water lily found everywhere is much more widespread ( Nymphaea candida ), which has smaller flowers, a quadrangular calyx base, and often a reddish stigma with fewer rays.

Finally, it is necessary to mention one more type of water lily, namely the small white water lily ( Nymphaea tetragona ), which is characterized by very small flowers with a sharply quadrangular calyx base and very few stigma rays.

Tiger water lily (Nymphea) (Nimphaea spec. "Lotus").

Scientists are still wondering where this beauty comes from. So far, her homeland is unknown, and not so many plants can boast of this! Nymphaeum has large shiny leaves covered with brown dots, and their color comes in two variations: either green or red. Like any water lily, the nymphaeum can form leaves floating on the surface of the water. And bloom beautifully.

Nymphea is very picky about the soil. It should contain a lot of organic matter. Its root system is quite large, but the roots themselves are tender, so gravel with a particle size of 4–8 mm is suitable for it, to which clay must be added, or clay balls with peat and charcoal. Sometimes to create capricious the necessary conditions, the nymphaeum is planted in a separate pot, where it is easier to make the soil she needs than in a common aquarium.

Water for the nymph should be soft, no more than 4 dH, pH 6–6.8. If the water is harder, the underwater leaves are crushed at the nymphaeum, it will begin to bush and it will be bad to form floating leaves. She loves old water, regular water changes are not necessary for the nymphaeum. Temperature 24-28 degrees.

Nymphaeum loves bright light. If there is not enough light, then the color of the leaves becomes faded, especially in the red form. The preferred lamp power is 0.5–0.6 W per 1 liter of aquarium volume.

Nymphea can reproduce both by seeds and vegetatively. If it is kept in suitable conditions, in soft water, then you can see a real miracle in your aquarium - how at night a snow-white lily with yellow stamens in the center rises to the surface of the water and blooms. It's unforgettable!

After flowering, the nymphaeum forms a capsule, which again goes under water. Ripe seeds can be sown in individual pots of sand covered with water and the water temperature maintained at 26 degrees. After a week, the seeds germinate, then the seedlings are thinned out, and after the formation of 2-3 leaves, they are transplanted into large pots. When a young nymph gives 4-5 large leaves, it can be planted in a common aquarium.

If the water hardness is more than 6 dH, then the nymphaeum does not bloom, but forms basal layering. They form a dense thicket that needs to be thinned out, otherwise the young plants will be very weak and frail.

In artificial reservoirs, hybrid water lilies-nymphs, known to many as "water lilies", are most often bred. There are countless varieties of water lilies, and they differ from each other only in the size and color of the flowers. It is on the size, which ranges from 5 to 30 cm, that you need to pay attention first of all: it must correspond to the size of your reservoir. So, large water lilies are suitable only for large ponds, and miniature varieties are appropriate in a mini-pond.

Quadrangular water lily (with photo)

Quadrangular water lily is a perennial aquatic plant with a thin rhizome that grows in lakes and river oxbow lakes, swamp hollows. Leaves with long petioles and floating on the surface of the water, from below - bare, ovate-heart-shaped plates up to 15 cm long. Flowers up to 5.5 cm in diameter, floating on the surface of the water, green sepals, white petals, 8-10 in number.

The species is widely distributed in the temperate zone throughout Eurasia, including Russia (in the boreal and nemoral zone). Also found in North America.

An aquatic plant that grows in shallow lakes, swamps.

Look at the photo of a quadrangular water lily, which presents different stages in plant growth and development:

How a white water lily blooms: description and photo of a flower

The white water lily flower in Russia grows in the European part. Outside - in Western Europe, in the Caucasus, in Asia Minor. Nemoral Eurasian look. You can see how a jug of this species blooms only in the wild, since it does not breed in artificial reservoirs.

Perennial aquatic rhizomatous plant with large floating long-leaved leaves, lobes of the leaf blade diverging, their inner sides somewhat rounded, marginal veins of the first order, entering the leaf lobes, almost straight or curved only in the first third of their length. The flowers are solitary, large (up to 15 cm in diameter), the base of the calyx is rounded, dazzling white petals, wide outside the flower. From the periphery of the flower to its center, the shape of the petals changes: they gradually narrow, turn into staminodes, and then gradually turn into stamens. In the middle of the flower there is a flat or almost flat stigma with a short hemispherical central process, with 8-24 rays. Pollen grains are covered with shi-peaks. Flowers with a slight pleasant smell. The fruits are large, almost spherical, multi-seeded. Blooms in June - August. Seeds float to the surface and are dispersed by birds, vegetative propagation is possible.

Reading the description of a white water lily and looking at its photo, it becomes clear that this is an amazing plant:

Water lily yellow: description of the plant of the reservoir

Yellow water lily as a pond plant has the following local names: Balabolki (Olon.), Yellow bells, Aquarius, Adalen, Odolen, Aquarius, River Watch (Bonfire), Yellow watchman (Astr.), Glechichok, Glechechki, Yellow Glechiki, Glechiki Zhovti (flowers), Gorlyashny seed, Gorlachiki, Mushroom house , in Little Russia, flowers are called: Bobki, Babki, fruits - Zbanok, Zbanochki, leaves - Droplets, and the root - Tovstup.

Description of yellow water lily: This is a perennial aquatic, with a creeping rhizome, a plant from the water lily family, common in almost all of Europe and all of Russia. Rounded leaves with a deep heart-shaped base; leaves float on the surface of the water, and yellow flowers are exposed from the water by 4–7 cm. Sepals 5; many petals attached to the receptacle. Ovary multilocular, with sessile radiant stigma. Flowers are fragrant. The fruit is juicy, berry-like. Grows in ponds and slowly flowing waters. Blooms from June to August. The roots of the plant are eaten during times of famine.