I had read that lotus often don’t flower during the first year but a member on the Victoria Adventure list mentioned that the smaller varieties sometimes do flower during their first year so I decided to try a small variety.
I found one called Red Scarf that is supposed to flower well so I purchased three bare tubers of those, shipped dry in plastic bags with a bit of peat moss, and planted them in the last week of April. They were placed in a grow bag about 15 inches wide and filled with about 6 inches of soil, with no fertilizer, and covered with washed beach sand.
I saw my first bud a week ago and just had my first flower open today.
Less than two months from bare tuber to open flower is comparable to many tropical waterlilies.
The flower was probably 5 or 6 inches and the largest leaf is about 10.5 inches.
It doesn’t look like some of the photos on commercial sites which seem to have edited the photo to make it appear redder than it is in real life.
It was purchased from a reputable company, Florida Aquatic Nurseries, so I think I have a correctly named lotus.
