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Sunday 17 August 2014

More Nymphaea at the Meise Botanical Gardens

The pond in the Victoria House is rather large as you can see. This enables it to contain several species of Nympheae as well as to accommodate at least two species of Victoria not to mention a host of other water plants. There appeared to be three Nymphaea although I may have missed some which were not flowering or looked like the ones I was able to get close enough to or at least zoom in on the name tags to see them. As it is two of them look very similar and it is only  when you look at them that you can see that there is a slight difference. But if they are in the middle of the pond ... several meters away ... well ... it is not as evident. You can judge for yourself from the photos below.

Nymphaea "Director G. T. Moore"

Nymphaea "Director G. T. Moore"

Note the similarity between Nymphaea "Director G. T. Moore" and Nympheae caerulea. Note however that part of the reason that the Nymphaea "Director G. T. Moore" looks a lot darker is because the Nympheae caerulea were in direct sunlight. To me it looks like the Nympheae caerulea has many more stamens. The problem is I still have not been able to figure out of Nymphaea "Director G. T. Moore" is an actual species or a cultivar or hybrid perhaps.

Nympheae caerulea



Nympheae caerulea




With Nympheae"General Pershing" on the other hand there is no difficulty in seeing that it is obviously a completely different plant although as with Nympheae"General Pershing" I am not sure if this is a species, cultivar or hybrid. To me it seems that whenever a name is in quotation marks it means that it is a hybrid. I could be wrong.
I will keep looking and when I find out or if someone writes in and enlightens me I will update the post.
Nympheae"General Pershing"


Nympheae"General Pershing"



Genus Name: Nymphaea
Common names: Water lilies (English) ;

Taxonomic hierarchy: 

Kingdom: Plantae - Plants
Subkingdom: Viridaeplantae – Green plants
Infrakingdom: Streptophyta – Land plants
Division: Tracheophyta – Vascular plants
Subdivision: Spermatophytina – Spermatophytes (seed plants)
Infradivision: Angiospermae – Angiosperms (flowering plants)
Class: Magnoliopsida
Superorder: Nymphaeanae
Order: Nypmhaeales
Family: Nymphaceae – Water lilies (English)
Genus: Nymphaea – 
Species: Nymphaea 'Director G. T. Moore' – 
Species: Nymphaea caerulea – 
Species: Nymphaea 'General Perishing' – Blue Egyptian Water lily, Sacred Blue Egyptian Water lily (English); Lotus bleu d'Egypte (French); Egyptiche blauwe lotus (Dutch)

Notes: 
  • I am using the taxonomical classification system used by ITIS (Intergrated Taxonomic Information System). I have decided to use this system in order to avoid confusion as well as because it offers a comprehensive hierarchy from kingdom right through to subspecies whereas other sources only go as far as order or  provide the names of some of the higher taxonomical ranks but only indicate "unclassified" rather than providing the rank.
  • When and where possible I will endeavour to include alternatives classifications although  I may limit this to occasions where an opportunity arises to discuss the reason for the different classifications.
  • Taxonomical data used in this post was retrieved [June 15 2014], from the Integrated Taxonomic Information System on-line database, http://www.itis.gov.
References:


On-line sources:


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