NEWS102
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Very small plantlet that isnevertheless alreadyproducing flower buds.
Splendid large specimensof
Nymphaeaxdaubenyana
in theheatedwaterlilypondat theWilhelma inStuttgart,Germany.
couldn’tbeused in theaquariumbecauseof
concerns for the fishes (in those days the
growingmedium used for waterlilies was a
mixtureof sand,old loam,andcompost,with
somewell-rotted cow dung added, and the
wholewellmatured - lovely!).
It wasn’t until the late 1960s that the Tiger
Lotus (
Nymphaea lotus
) became a regular
aquariumplant in the tanksofenthusiasts,to
becomeastandardthereafter.Thisplantowes
itssuccess intheaquariumhobbytoarethink
by aquarists. Previously people had tried to
growwaterlilies in a natural manner, that is
with floating leaves, in order to enjoy their
splendid flowers. But we learned from the
Tiger Lotus that it is possible to exploit the
ecological flexibility of some species and
cultivate them entirely under water ( =
submerse).Grown inthisway,somewaterlilies
are truly splendid underwater plants,
although it is necessary to promptly prune
away the floating leaves that appear from
time to time, as otherwise the underwater
leaveswilldieoff.
Theoriginsof
Nymphaea
xdaubenyana
The precise history of the origins of this
attractive waterlily is unknown, but the
aforementionedAlbertWendt states that it
was a Professor Caspary in Königsberg
(nowKaliningrad,Russia)who first crossed
the species
N.micracantha
and
N. coerulea
and thus produced the plants discussed
here.ProfessorDaubeny inOxford issaid to
have subsequently repeated the cross.
While this waterlily was initially marketed
in Germany as
Nymphaea stellata prolifera
hortorum
,
before
very
long
the
horticulturalname
NymphaeaDaubenyana
prevailed. In the past species that were
named after people were spelled with a
capital letter. Nowadays the plant is
generally known as
Nymphaea x
