Water lilies, loss of woodiness, and model systems

• The delicate necklace of threaded petals from the tomb of Rameses II, mid-nineteenth century glasshouses built for the newly discovered Victoria amazonica, and Monet’s giant canvases in the Mus´ee de l’Orangerie all testify to a deep human attraction to waterlilies: beguiling plants with showy flowers that seem toarise nymph-like out of the mud. Like orchids, cacti, succulents, and carnivorous plants, water lilies have a dedicated band of horticulturalists devoted to growing and exploring their endless variety. The late nineteenth century craze for water lilies that attracted Monet was fueled by one such enthusiast, Joseph Bory Latour-Marliac, who developed hardy waterlily cultivars with dazzling new flower colors ranging from “delicate yellow to fuscia and deep red.” Nymphaea thermarum, the focus of the recent paper by Povilus et al., is another unusual water lily variant. The smallest water lily known, N. thermarum was discovered and described in the late 1980s. Endemic to hot spring lakes in the Albertine Rift Valley of Rwanda, now, just a few decades after its discovery,it appears to be extinct in the wild.

Subject headings

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Geovetenskap och miljövetenskap -- Annan geovetenskap och miljövetenskap (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Earth and Related Environmental Sciences -- Other Earth and Related Environmental Sciences (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Ecosystems and species history

Ekosystem och arthistoria

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)