AMERICAN LOTUS (Chinquapin. Yonkapin ) 

 Nelumbo lutea (Willd.) Pers. 



July - August In midsummer the Illinois Elver and its adjoining lakes, 

 Swamps, lakes as well as many other still waters over much of Illinois, 

 become a land of pale yellow lotuses blossoming, acre 

 upon acre, across the state. Late in spring the rolled-up, red-brown leaves 

 push out of the mud, and as they emerge in the sunlight they become a 

 soft, silvery green. The convoluted, crinkled, twirled up leaf slowly 

 spreads wide in the warm sunlight and becomes a big leaf platter, slightly 

 cupped, with a depression at its center where the stem joins from below. 

 Here almost every summer morning a few drops of night dew roll down 

 the slippery leaf surface and come to rest, mercury-like, in a glistening- 

 globe of \\'ater. 



By the time the leaves have spread to their usual width of a foot 

 or more, a big, egg-shaped bud comes pushing up from the mud, is en- 

 cased in several layers of corded scales and sepals, and finally stands 

 five feet high or more from its base in the lake. Early one July morning 

 the sepals fall away and the delicate, enormous flower, pale yellow and 

 exotically scented, opens in majesty. The center is made uji of a large, 

 flat-topped, pe])pershaker pistil in the surface of which the seeds form. 

 Around it cluster dozens of lightly poised, dusty yellow stamens. Rows 

 of big oval petals are arranged around the s])lendi(l center. 



From mid-July until early September, the lotus is iho outstanding 

 blossom of Illinois. The great petals fall and the tall stem with its 

 shaker-top of seeds ripens and browns. The loaves even before frost grow 

 tattered and brown, and sink into the water. The seed pods bend over 

 and fall in the water, where the })ods disintegrate enough to liberate the 

 large seeds, 



203 



