Today I learned a lesson in viviparous water lily culture: that is, propagating water lilies without actually dividing the rhizome/roots. You see, I was cleaning out the
crabapple leaves from the container pond which houses a
Panama Pacific tropical waterlily, and to my surprise found little baby water lily plants floating in the pond with it! Evidently my mamma lily reproduced herself viviparously: that is, she formed miniature copies of herself on an actual leaf--in the node where the stem and leaf join. As the host leaf decays, the little replica continues to grow, and in my case, developed a dandy root system in the hair-like strands of algae also growing in the pond. Curious as to how to encourage this sort of propagation? Found a great article
HERE which describes just that.Now that I have several of these little babies, I'll be spending time this weekend potting them up and researching the best methods for overwintering, as these beautiful lilies are not winter hardy in our climate.
A perfect miniature replica of the parent-plant
Now that I know what to look for, I spotted these growth nodes on almost all the leaves on the parent plant. Yowzas!
A developing root structure
Can you spot the tiny snail?
Floating a baby water lily in a fancy wine-glass until planting time
Something else that propagates quite freely in this container pond: aquatic snails
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