My first American lotus

15 years ago

A while back I figured it'd be fun to try to grow an American lotus (Nelumbo lutea) so I bought some seeds and gave it a try.

First photo is the seed after having soaked for a while, showing where I sanded through the seed coat:

I scrubbed the seed with a brush every day to keep the mold under control, and one day the dimpled end popped off while brushing and I was surprised to find green!

The next day it had already grown out and popped free of the seed:

Two days later and it's grown a lot and now another leaf is showing at the base. Also, I planted it in a milk jug at this point, with dirt dug up from a corner of the yard.

Here's the first leaf staring to unroll:

Here's the plant saying "YUCK!" to our tap water:

I ran out of distilled water and figured tap water would be ok. The lotus had other opinions and the leaves almost immediately started shriveling up. Here's one leaf showing the damage:

I suspect the problem was chlorine/chloramine and/or salt as our city water is softened. After dumping and refilling with distilled water the new leaf that was still unrolling thankfully didn't burn:

The lotus grew quickly, and filled the jug:

At this point I figured it was time to move up to the final container, so we filled the pot with dirt from the edge of a local lake and flooded it with rain water. We followed these directions to do the actual transplant. Here's the lotus in its new home:

It has already grown into the surrounding soil, with new leaves showing up pretty much every day:

That first picture was taken on May 17, the last July 15, a difference of 59 days, with hopefully more to come (I'm waiting for the first aerial leaf.)

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Comments (12)

Calamity_J
15 years ago
How Amazing!!! I can't even get my elephant ear bulb to grow!!! Way to go...er grow! Thanks for sharing this with us, and keep us posted!!!!
Rotareneg
Original Author
15 years ago
Still no aerial leaves, but it has covered most of the pot now:

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And under slightly different lightning:

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annedickinson
15 years ago
Wow.. .How fun to watch the birth and growth of the lotus. Please keep us posted on the progress.
Rotareneg
Original Author
15 years ago
It's turning into a monster... I'm worried that at some point it's going to crawl away looking for a larger body of water to conquer. :D

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Rotareneg
Original Author
15 years ago
The lotus yesterday afternoon:

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The lotus this evening:

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A pretty strong storm with some golf ball sized hail and strong winds did this to my poor lotus.
Rotareneg
Original Author
15 years ago
Oops, updated the images and it killed the linked ones:

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Rotareneg
Original Author
15 years ago
Here's a slice of the leaf stalk from a leaf that was torn clean off the plant:

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Rotareneg
Original Author
15 years ago
It looks like it's pulled through just fine, and it may be starting to send up it's first aerial leaves:

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barbarajon
15 years ago
Wow that is great. I am amazed to see the patience in you to click snap since you started. ItÃ¯Â¿Â½s fun to watch lotus grow from a seed to a fully grown plant.
koiandturtle
14 years ago
That is very cool, I have three seeds that Im starting now for my pond, do you still have it going?
Rotareneg
Original Author
14 years ago
I didn't have any place to put the pot over winter where it wouldn't freeze so I pulled some tubers and kept them in the fridge. I planted a tuber in a bigger pot earlier this spring, but the new leaves kept getting shredded mysteriously. Turned out the water was shallow enough for grackles to bath in the pot, ripping the fragile new leaves apart in the process. I removed enough dirt to ensure the water was deep enough to keep the birds out and replanted the tuber, but the weather hasn't been consistently warm enough to get it really going well yet.

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Rotareneg
Original Author
14 years ago
The lotus has grown a little since that last picture...

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Also started another seedling, it's coming along fine too:

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And finally a lotus I bought online, grown in a lab, not a tuber. It got started later and has some brown leaves because stress from shipping and transplanting made it go partially dormant:

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