Victoria amazonica

Posted 20 April 2009 by

Victoria amazonica --- Water Lily, Sarah P. Duke Gardens

12 Comments

Zyzzyva · 20 April 2009

...I suddenly have a hankering for pie.

Glen Davidson · 20 April 2009

A deep-dish pizza pie, I was thinking.

Glen D

http://tinyurl.com/6mb592

KP · 20 April 2009

Too perfect to have arisen by "random" processes. There must have been a designer....

Frank B · 20 April 2009

I enjoyed seeing this African water lily many times at the Missouri Botanical Gardens in St. Louis. They looked man-made. I agree with KP, I think the ID'ers should drop the bacterial flagellum and the banana in favor of the water lily:)

angst · 20 April 2009

Frank B said: I enjoyed seeing this African water lily many times at the Missouri Botanical Gardens in St. Louis.
South American water lily. At least according to Wikipedia.
V. amazonica is native to the shallow waters of the Amazon River basin,...

wright · 20 April 2009

I first saw a picture of these in a kid's encyclopedia published in the early 1900s. I think I was seven or eight. Since that particular encyclopedia had been shown to be wrong before (and downright racist at times, not unusual for kids' publications of that era), I thought this was another exaggeration or outright lie.

It wasn't until years later, seeing some of those lilies at a zoo, that I found that patronizing, bigoted encyclopedia had actually been right.

Frank B · 20 April 2009

Let me see, Victoria amazonica. The Victoria Falls are in Africa. Yeah, that's the ticket. That's why I got it wrong;)

Henry J · 20 April 2009

Let me see, Victoria amazonica. The Victoria Falls are in Africa. Yeah, that’s the ticket. That’s why I got it wrong;)

Well, just declare Victoria and then you'll have won. Henry

Paul Burnett · 20 April 2009

So are those Medium, Large or Extra Large pizza pans? What's the scale on the picture - what's the leaves' diameter?

Seconds later, having looked it up: "The species has very large leaves, up to 3 m in diameter..." Holy Batman - that's not a pizza pan, that's a liferaft!

Reed A. Cartwright · 20 April 2009

I think these were about a yard across.

Frank J · 21 April 2009

KP said: Too perfect to have arisen by "random" processes. There must have been a designer....
Nah. The symmetry screams "regularity." Maybe if you look inside the cell you might find "complexity, irreducible and specified." But alas, you'll also find evidence of the common ancestry with us that Mr. "irreducible complexity" plainly conceded, and Mr. "specified complexity" never explicitly denied.

John Kwok · 21 April 2009

Reed,

Another superb picture from you IMHO. It reminds me of water lillies I've seen over at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens.

Cheers,

John