Big water lily: Newly recognized species is world’s largest

Virtually 180 years after specimens have been first introduced from Bolivia to the UK, an enormous water lily has been confirmed as a definite species

By Carissa Wong

A newly recognized species of water lily can also be the biggest of its form, with lily pads as much as 3.2 metres huge and flowers which can be every bigger than a human head.

“The lily pads may positively take the load of a younger little one,” says Natalia Przelomska at Kew Gardens within the UK, who co-led the work with Oscar A. Pérez Escobar. In concept, the large leaves can assist the load of an grownup of about 80 kilograms. “[But] I believe you’d must put some sort of assist in it to distribute their weight on the lily pad,” says Przelomska. “Although we’ve not examined it!”

The brand new species, named Victoria boliviana, is simply the third recognized species of big water lily.

In 2016, Bolivian establishments Santa Cruz de La Sierra Botanic Backyard and La Rinconada Gardens donated a group of big water lily seeds to Kew Gardens. As Carlos Magdalena – a horticulturalist at Kew and member of the analysis crew – germinated and grew the seeds he may see they have been totally different from the 2 recognized species of water lily. In 2019, he visited Bolivia to see the water lilies rising within the wild.

V. boliviana grows in freshwater rivers, floodplains and ponds in north-eastern Bolivia. Though it’s unclear precisely why it developed to be so huge, earlier research recommend that the massive measurement of water lilies could assist them compete with different crops for daylight.

“The biodiversity within the tropics is so excessive, so when an aquatic space opens up – for instance, as a result of the rivers instantly grow to be bigger attributable to a flood – the water lilies can thrive there as a result of they develop actually rapidly and seize a lot of the daylight, and outcompete different crops,” says Przelmoska.

Przelmoska and her colleagues additionally discovered that the genome of V. boliviana is bigger than the genomes of the 2 different recognized big water lily species, Victoria cruziana and Victoria amazonica. It comprises over 4 billion base pairs.

“Usually, a bigger plant wouldn’t essentially have a bigger genome, however the largest water lilies occur to have the largest [lily] genomes and we’d like to grasp why,” says Przelmoska.

Additional genetic evaluation revealed that the widespread ancestor of V. cruziana and V. boliviana break up from V. amazonica about 5 million years in the past, whereas V. cruziana and V. boliviana each appeared about 1 million years in the past.

The crew additionally discovered that V. boliviana appears to be at better threat of extinction than the opposite two species, as a result of smaller geographical vary over which it lives. All three species are underneath elevated menace as deforestation within the Amazon continues.

“Like the opposite species, V. bolivana is at menace as a result of the atmosphere has been degraded yr by yr,” says Przelmoska.

Journal reference: Frontiers in Plant Science, DOI: 10.3389/fpls.2022.883151

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