NYMPHAEA ODORATA. 
SWEET-SCENTED WATER-LILY. 
NATURAL ORDER, NYMPHACE. 
NyMPHA ODORATA, Aiton.—Leaves orbicular, cordate-cleft at the base to the petiole, five to 
nine inches wide, the margin entire; stipules broadly triangular or almost kidney- 
shaped, notched at the apex, appressed to the root-stock; flowers white, very sweet- 
scented, cften as much as five and a half inches in diameter when fully expanded, 
opening early in the morning, closing in the afternoon; petals obtuse; axil much longer 
than the distinctly stipitate oblong seeds. (Gray’s AZanual of Botany of the Northern 
United States. See also Chapman’s Flora of the Southern United States, and Wood’s 
Class-Book of Botany.) 
NGIEW flowers have excited the enthusiasm of the poets as 
S ye much as the common lily; but among these few our 
pure white water-lilies must be ranked, and indeed the senti- 
ments born of the one are often identical with those incited by 
the other. 
Bryant, in his beautiful poem of the “Child and the Lily,” 
exclaims: 
“Innocent child and snow-white flower! 
Well are ye paired in your opening hour; 
Thus should the pure and the lovely meet 
Stainless with stainless, and sweet with sweet.” $ 
And though it is probable that the poet had the white eastern 
lily in view, the sentiment is just as applicable to our sweet 
water-lily; a flower which the emblematists have dedicated to 
purity. Joaquin Miller expresses just the same idea, when 
he says: 
«“ The lily on the water sleeping, 
Enwreathed with pearl, and ’bossed with gold, 
An emblem is, my love, of thee.” 
(133) 
