Mexican Waterlily is delicate pale yellow waterlily
which has become a weed outside it's native range Maxico. It is present
in abundance in the Dal lake in Kashmir, and has to be periodically
removed. Rhizomes unbranched, erect, cylindric; runners elongate,
spongy, developing clusters of curved, fleshy roots resembling tiny
bananas at at branch-ends nodes. Leaf-stalks are hairless. Leaf blade
below purplish with dark flecks, above green, often with brown
mottling, ovate to elliptic or nearly circular, 7-18 x 7-14 cm, margins
entire or wavy; venation radiate and impressed centrally, without
weblike pattern, principal veins 11-22; surfaces hairless. Flowers are
floating or emersed, 6-11 cm in diameter, opening and closing
diurnally, only sepals and outermost petals in distinct whorls of 4;
sepals uniformly yellowish green, often red-tinted, evidently veined,
lines of insertion on receptacle often slightly prominent. Petals are
12-30, yellow; stamens about 50-60, yellow, connective appendage minute
or absent; filaments widest below middle, longer than anthers. Seeds
are spherical, about 5 × 5 mm. Mexican Waterlily is native to Mexico,
introduced and naturalized in many places world over.
Identification credit: Tabish
Photographed in Dal lake, Srinagar, Kashmir.
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The flower labeled Mexican Waterlily is ...