Have you ever had a close look at lotus flowers? I hadn’t until I visited the Kenilworth Park & Aquatic Gardens last summer. The park is in the District of Columbia, stretching along the eastern shore of the Anacostia River, several miles above where the Anacostia flows into the Potomac. The National Park Service manages the park. Its lotus and water lily ponds are built within a grid of grassy pathways, and are surrounded by trees and a large marsh you can wander through on a boardwalk. The ponds and marsh are in a world of their own, edged by forest, on the less-visited side of the river, away from the Capitol, the memorials, the museums, and the busy downtown – beautiful!
There are more beds of water lilies than lotuses in the Gardens, but it’s the lotuses, with their large high blossoms, that one is drawn to right away. Their blossoms stand five or six feet tall on slender stems, well above the water and their large bowl-shaped leaves below. After the blossoms have opened for two or three days in a row, and the bees have done their pollinating, the petals droop and then finally drop. The brilliant yellow center receptacles that are initially ringed by filaments of stamens continue to grow and transform into large green seed pods. You can see the various stages of the transforming lotuses in one visit – some of them just starting as buds, and others having finished days ago. At the end of the process the large seed pods bend over. A catacomb of holes in their faces has opened for the completed seeds inside to drop through – free to fall into the pond and be carried to whatever is next for them.
The pink petals of the lotuses in this pond indicate they are the “sacred lotus” (Nelumbo nucifera), one of two species within the lotus family. The other species is American lotus (Nelumbo lutea), which has white to pale yellow petals. Many of the lotuses in this pond have already blossomed, leaving behind seed pods on the tops of their stems (lower left). Here a lotus bud on the center stem is ready to open. The yellow/green petal-like sepals at the base initially protected the bud and have now retracted to allow the pink petals to open. Seed pods on stems to the left and right are days farther along, having shed their petals and gotten larger as their seeds have grown within.The outermost yellowish petal-like sepals enclose the pink-petalled bud. In the several days of blossoming ahead the petals will open during the day and close at night, but they will not close as tightly as this again.A fully-opened lotus blossom – a solar panel aimed toward the sun. It releases its scents and invites pollinators in.Lotuses are day-blooming flowers, opening early in the morning and closing at night during their brief life.This blossom’s pink-veined petals rise from a base that’s saturated with the yellow reflected from the bright seed pod within.The newly opened flowers first offer the female seed pod more prominently than the stamens, resulting in cross-pollination from insects that have visited older flowers with more upright stamens. Here’s a closer look at the young seed pod and its pollinating visitor. This pod only has nine stigmas so far, poking through the surface of the “receptacle”. The pollen-receiving stigmas are the tops of the female organs within the pod that will house the developing seeds.This seed pod is farther along in development, with about two dozen stigmas poking through its top. The surrounding petals are more fully opened and will soon start drooping and falling off, along with the stamens.Lotus leaves have a shallow bowl shape and are fully closed circles. The leaves of water lilies, lotus relatives, are also broad, but not fully closed, with a separation from the outer edge to the stem – and they float on the water rather than stand above it.A bright green bramble reaches over the softer bluish greens of several lotus leaves.Lotus leaves have a surface that repels water. Rain drops collect into pools of water that race around the shallow bowl of the leaf as it sways in the breeze.Its work done, this fading lotus leaf is beginning to lose its green chlorophyll and curl inward. It will soon drop into the water below, with the green chlorophyll receding, leaving behind bright yellows and browns, as is happening with the out-of-focus leaf on the left.This seed pod, with newly forming seeds inside beginning to separate from its surface, has shed its petals and stamens, lost its brilliant yellow color, and grown to accomodate the pollinated seeds within.The dark stigmas have become the tips of developing pale green seeds that are on the verge of separating from the surface of the seed pod. Here the lotus seeds are more fully developed, and have separated from the surfce of the pod.A pod with fully-developed seeds and enlarged openings begins to bend over, and will eventually fall apart, dropping its seeds into the water if they haven’t fallen out already. A closeup of the pod’s surface, with its seeds in their cubby holes, ready to drop into the water below.
