Victoria (waterlily)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- Victoria regia redirects here. For the music album of that name see Victoria Regia.
 |
||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 A flowering Victoria in the Amsterdam Hortus Botanicus
Photograph by Dirk van der Made |
||||||||||||
| Scientific classification | ||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||
|
Victoria amazonica (Poepp.) Sowerby |
The genus Victoria represents the giant water lilies. The most famous, Victoria amazonica, is the largest of all with leaves sometimes nearly 3 m in diameter, on stalks 7–8 m in length. Victoria is named after Queen Victoria. V. amazonica was once called Victoria regia, but the species name was superseded.
V. amazonica is native to the shallow waters of the Amazon River basin, such as oxbow lakes and bayous. It is depicted in the Guyanese coat of arms. The flowers are white the first night they are open and become pink the second night. They are up to 40 cm in diameter, and are pollinated by beetles.
A second species, V. cruziana, in the Parana-Paraguay basin which is only slightly smaller, with the underside of the leaves purple rather than the red of V. amazonica, and covered with a peachlike fuzz lacking in V. amazonica. V. cruziana opens its flowers at dusk.
A third type, V. mattogrossensis or V. cruziana var. mattogrossensis, found in the pantanal region, resembles V. cruziana except in having huge seeds.
Contents |
[edit] History
Reflected in the water,
Beloved, admired by hearts and eyes,
Stands Annie, Paxton's daughter..."
Victoria regia was once the subject of rivalry between Victorian gardeners in England. Always on the look out for a spectacular new species with which to impress their peers, Victorian "Gardeners"[1] such as the Duke of Devonshire, and the Duke of Northumberland started a well-mannered competition to become the first to cultivate and bring to flower this enormous lily. In the end, the two aforementioned Dukes became the first to achieve this, Joseph Paxton (for the Duke of Devonshire) being the first in November 1849 by replicating entirely the lily's warm swampy habitat (no mean feat in winter in England when you only have coal-fired boilers for heating), and a "Mr Ivison" the second and more constantly successful (for Northumberland) at Syon House (now part of Kew Gardens).
The Duke of Devonshire presented, via the person of Paxton, Queen Victoria with one of the first of these flowers, and named it in her honour. Moreover, the lily, with ribbed undersurface and leaves veining "like transverse girders and supports", was Paxton's inspiration for The Crystal Palace, a building four times the size of St. Peter's in Rome.[2]
[edit] Victoria amazonica in pictures
 Leaf of Victoria amazonica. |
 Flower of Victoria amazonica. |
 Victoria amazonica. |
 Victoria amazonica. |
[edit] External links
[edit] Notes
- ^ In reality they did little or no actual gardening at all, but employed talented horticulturalists such as Joseph Paxton (for Devonshire) and the forgetten Mr Ivison (for Northumberland) to run their estates and gardens.
- ^ H. Peter Loewer. The Evening Garden: Flowers and Fragrance from Dusk Till Dawn. Timber Press, 2002. ISBN 0-88192-532-2. Page 130.
