Water lilies so captivated the attention of French impressionist painter Claude Monet that he created over 250 paintings featuring them. Their beauty is quite striking—we are not accustomed to seeing flowers blooming on the water’s surface, so they stand out to the human eye.

A handful of floating aquatic flowering plants are native to northwest Florida, including spatterdock and American lotus, but the fragrant water lily (Nymphaea odorata) is probably the most recognizable. Its notched, saucer-shaped leaves also float, thanks to an open internal structure that resembles the inside of a Nestle Crunch bar. The leaves are composed of spongelike aerenchyma, which holds air and buoys the plant. The flowers and leaves are anchored to the mud far below them by a long rhizome, also built of aerenchyma. A pressure differential formed from the sun heating leaves at the water’s surface sends air down that rhizome to the roots, allowing the plant to thrive in anaerobic conditions. Water lilies use this adaptation to capitalize on the underutilized “real estate” of open water bodies, floating on the water’s surface and photosynthesizing without competition from the grasses and trees surrounding them.

Nymphaea odorata has an extraordinarily wide native range, living on living on ponds, lakes, and slow-moving streams throughout North America. They thrive in a huge variety of temperature and habitats, from Florida and Puerto Rico to Alaska and Canada! There are 65 related species of water lilies worldwide, living in Europe, Africa, South America, and Asia. Over the centuries, water lilies have been used in medicine, food products, religious mythology, tobacco pipes, and art. Most parts of the water lily are toxic to humans; when used as food it was typically cooked or ground into flour, and often only when other food was scarce.

While in the wild these flowers are deeply fragrant and a bright white, they are heavily hybridized and may be found in shades of yellow, pink, and light purple.

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