Zoöp Observations: Water LiliesZoöp Observations: Water Lilies

At first glance, the water plants in the ponds of the New Institute seem to thrive. Still, some species have almost disappeared in the year since they were planted. In particular I'm thinking of the native flowering rush (Butomus umbellatus) and the exotic water hawthorn (Aponogeton distachyos). These plants were probably suffocated by the explosive growth of filamentous algae. In this case "suffocated" refers to the deprivation of sufficient light. Fortunately, the algae problem mainly occurs in the shallower parts of the ponds. Water plants in the deeper parts of the pond don't have to compete for light with the filamentous algae, and are doing fine. This can be seen, for example, from the blooming water lilies, of which I counted about forty today, in two varieties: the red Nymphaea ‘Attraction’ and the white Nymphaea ‘Gladstoniana’.

The Attraction is a hybrid that originated in 1910 at the nursery of Joseph Bory Latour-Marliac (1830-1911) from crosses between several wild water lilies, likely including the Nymphaea alba. Latour-Marliac's nursery in Le Temple-sur-Lot (southeast of Bordeaux) was probably the first in the world (1875) that specialized in water lilies. Claude Monet visited Latour-Marliac's stand at the 1889 World Exhibition in Paris. A few years later, Monet bought plants from Latour-Marliac for his own pond in Giverny, which he then immortalized in his paintings. The water lily nursery in Le Temple-sur-Lot still exists. Of the nearly 80 varieties developed by its founder, 54 are still grown and traded today.

The Gladstoniana is a cross between the North American Nymphaea tuberosa and the Eurasian Nymphaea alba. This variety originated spontaneously in 1897, in one of the ponds of George Richardson, a breeder of water lilies from Lordstown, Ohio. Richardson's nursery, founded shortly after 1880, was for decades the American counterpart of that of Latour-Marliac. The lily was named after the liberal British statesman William Gladstone (1809-1898) in his honour. In his 1898 catalog, Richardson praised the Gladstoniana as "one of, if not the best water lily I ever introduced".