
Nymphaeaceae /ˌnɪmfiːˈeɪsiː/ is a family of flowering plants, commonly called water lilies. They live as rhizomatous aquatic herbs in temperate and tropical climates around the world. The family contains five genera with about 70 known species. Water lilies are rooted in soil in bodies of water, with leaves and flowers floating on or emergent from the surface. The leaves are round, with a radial notch in Nymphaea and Nuphar, but fully circular in Victoria and Euryale. Water lilies are a well studied clade of plants because their large flowers with multiple unspecialized parts were initially considered to represent the floral pattern of the earliest flowering plants, and later genetic studies confirmed their evolutionary position as basal angiosperms. Analyses of floral morphology and molecular characteristics and comparisons with a sister taxon, the family Cabombaceae, indicate, however, that the flowers of extant water lilies with the most floral parts are more derived than the genera with fewer floral parts. Genera with more floral parts, Nuphar, Nymphaea, Victoria, have a beetle pollination syndrome, while genera with fewer parts are pollinated by flies or bees, or are self- or wind-pollinated. Thus, the large number of relatively unspecialized floral organs in the Nymphaeaceae is not an ancestral condition for the clade. Learn more about Water-lily
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Water-Lily Species Videos
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Common Name | Scientific Name | Conservation Status |
Amazon Water-lily (1 videos) | Victoria amazonica | Not Available |
Amazon Waterlily (1 videos) | Nymphaea amazonum | Not Available |
American Waterlily (3 videos) | Nymphaea odorata | Not Available |
Common Frogbit (1 videos) | Hydrocharis morsus-ranae | Least concern |
Egyptian Lotu (22 videos) | Nymphaea caerulea | Not Available |
European White Waterlily (2 videos) | Nymphaea alba | Least concern |
Lotu (18 videos) | Nelumbo lutea | Not Available |
Pondweed (5 videos) | Potamogeton marianensis | Not Available |
Sacred Lotu (3 videos) | Nelumbo nucifera | Not Available |
Schreber's Watershield (2 videos) | Brasenia schreberi | Not Available |
Waterlily (69 videos) | Nymphaea x thiona | Not Available |
White Egyptian Lotu (25 videos) | Nymphaea lotus | Not Available |