HE Yellow Pond Lily is often found growing in extensive beds, mingled with the White, and though it is less graceful in form, there is yet much to admire in its rich orange-coloured flowers, which appear at a little distance like balls of gold floating on the still waters. The large hollow petal-like sepals that surround the flower are finely clouded with dark red on the outer side, but of a deep yellow orange within, as also are the strap-like petals and stamens: the stigma, or summit of the pistil, is flat, and 12-24 rayed. The leaves are dark-green, scarcely so large as those of the White Lily, floating on long thick fleshy stalks, flattened on the inner side, and rounded without. The botanical name Nuphar is derived, says Gray, from the Arabic word Neufar, signifying Pond Lily.
Our Artist has closely followed nature’s own arrangements by grouping these beautiful water plants together.
Where there is a deep deposit of mud in the shallows of still waters we frequently find many different species of aquatics growing promiscuously. The tall lance-like leaf and blue-spiked heads of the stately Pontederia, keeping guard as it were above the graceful Nymphæa, like a gallant knight with lance in rest, ready to defend his queen, and around these the fair and delicate white flowers of the small arrow-head rest their frail heads upon the water, looking as if the slightest breeze that ruffled its surface would send them from their place of rest.
Beyond this aquatic garden lie beds of wild rice Zizania aquatica, with its floating leaves of emerald green, and waving grassy flowers of straw colour and purple—while nearer to the shore the bright rosy tufts of the Water Persicaria, with its dark-green leaves and crimson stalks, delight the eyes of the passer-by.
PLATE IX.
| SARRACENIA PURPUREA | |
| (Side-saddle Flower) | |
| (Pitcher Plant) | |
| (Huntsman’s Cup) |