Nymphaea zenkeri

[scokaw]

Hi all, I've been a member here for a couple of years and have enjoyed everyone's posts and pictures.  I have a question about one of my plants and figured this would be the perfect opportunity for my first posting.

I got this plant as Nymphaea zenkeri "Red Tiger Lotus", and forgot about it until I just noticed a nightblooming white flower appear.  I found a lot of conflicting articles on the web, but the consensus seems to be that it's a synonym for N. lotus and rubra.

Can anyone confirm this or shed a little more light on the subject?

Would someone also be willing to give me a crash course in posting a picture?  I can't quite figure it out.

Thanks
Scott

[Joyce]

It's a Tropical Water Lily and NOT a lotus.
Commonly sold in aquarium stores as aquarium plants (IF you have a HUGE aquarium) with the horribly misleading name of Red Tiger Lotus. 

That's because they assume most people don't know the difference between a water lily and a lotus. 

It's another sales gimmick, playing off peoples ignorance.

[Bearb]

I'll be following this thread closely. For fun, this winter I got a couple of these tubers from the aquarium section of Walmart. I put them in a small aquarium and was able to pinch off 5 small starts (only one actually began to grow). I potted these little plants in small pots and put them in the pond last week. Does anybody know how big they get (Zone 5/6 growing season)? I'm not expecting much, but for $3 it seemed like a fun experiment. . .

[scokaw]

Joyce, thanks for that info.

It's definitely a popular plant in the aquarium trade, because of their variegated red and/or green leaves.  I know a lot of people that keep trimming back the surface leaves to keep it small.  So I was surprised when I saw the bloom the other night.   

I'm not big on aquarium plants, which is why i potted it and placed it in an outdoor tub.  Plus is was free from the store owner.

Do you know if it's supposed to be the same plant as the nightblooming waterlily Nymphaea lotus or Nymphaea rubra?

[PondmaninAL]

Joyce, there is a water lily called Egyptian Blue Lotus. I believe it's N. caerulea. The color of the bloom is similar to N. immutabalis.

Bearb, are you referring to the dried tubers? I bought one and planted it. It was suppose to be a lily. It had floating leaves but the flowers were white spikes.

[Joyce]

I don't care what it's 'commonly' called, it is not a lotus. 

[Vickie]

Claude Bouch'e created tropical night blooming hybrids, all in 1852 and 1853, 16 of them named. Seven of them were the result of pollination of N. rubra with pollen of N. lotus, while the rest were pollinations of the resulting hybrids with pollen of N. lotus. The best known of these was N. 'Boucheana', first described by Planchon in Flore des Serres et des jardins de l'Europe, Volume 10, 1855. One might wonder how seven different hybrids could be created from the same cross of two species but we propose that N. rubra was capable of producing varying shades. Descriptions of all 16 can be found in "The Bouché Nymphaea Hybrids" (German - English) by Professor Dr. Karl Koch, published in Allgemeine Gartenzeitung, No. 35, 1857.

[Vickie]

Nymphaea lotus, the Tiger Lotus or Egyptian White Water-lily, is a flowering plant of the family Nymphaeaceae that grows in various parts of East Africa and Southeast Asia. It is known to flower at night and close in the morning and remains of the flower have been found in the burial tomb of Ramesses II.

This species of water lily has lily pads which float on the water, and blossoms which rise above the water.

[Vickie]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nymphaea_lotus

[Vickie]

Egyptian water lily - white Egyptian lotus: water lily of Egypt to southeastern Africa; held sacred by the Egyptians
Nymphaea lotus, white lotus, white lily, lotus

[Bearb]

Scott, yes a dried tuber on a little card. All the starts put out red "spear shaped" underwater leaves. They look like the images google turns up when you search "red tiger lotus". Eventually they began sending up surface leaves. The surface leaves are small, deeply forked, pointed ovals about 2 1/2 inches long. They come up dark red/maroon and change to a drab green. None of the starts have more than 2 surface leaves yet. I imagine they will put up larger leaves in time (these starts are TINY). I have no idea what the flowers will look like or if I will get any.

Bryan