The colossal Victoria lily is blooming and that means work to be done for Jos van der Hoek of the Hortus Botanicus in Amsterdam. Because the flowers of this beautiful aquatic plant have to be pollinated by hand. So Jos puts on his waders and goes into the water with a brush, so that we can enjoy these beautiful lilies again next year.
Giant Victoria lily in Hortus – NH Nieuws
Even without flowers, the Victoria lily is beautiful to see. “The leaves are sometimes up to two meters in diameter and can carry up to forty kilos,” explains Quinten Mudde of the Hortus. “It blooms at night. The flower lasts for two days and then it disappears again.”
In the wild
In South America, where the lily grows in the wild, they don’t have people like Jos who fertilize the flowers. “That’s where big beetles do that. They crawl in at night when the flower blooms white the first time. In the morning the flower closes and the beetles are trapped. They then pick up the pollen grains. The second night the flower blooms purple and then it opens again and the beetles take off on their way to another flower, taking the pollen grains with them and fertilizing the next flower.”
Because those beetles do not occur here, Jos himself goes with a brush along the stamens in one flower and then takes them to the pistil of the other flower. “If we don’t do that, we won’t have any flowers next year.”
Want to see the flowers of the Victoria lily yourself? Holds the Hortus website closely monitor.
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