STUDIES OF PLANT LIFE 
flowers instead of the harsh-sounding, unmeaning ones that 
we find in our scientific manuals of Botany. So we have 
among our local and familiar names such prettily sound- 
ing ones as “Lady’s-tresses,” “Sweet Cicely,” “ Sweet 
Marjoram,” or “ Marjory,” “Mary-gold,” “ Lady’s-slipper,” 
with a number of others that I could name—besides descrip- 
tive names which form a sort of biography of the plant, 
giving us a correct idea of its characteristics and peculiar 
uses or habits. 
SwEET SCENTED WATER-LILY—Nymphea odorata (Ait.). 
(PLATE XV.) 
“Rocked gently there, the beautiful Nymphzea 
Pillows her bright head.” 
—Calendar of Flowers. 
Water-lily is the popular name by which this beautiful 
aquatic plant is known, nor can we find it in our hearts to 
reject the name of Lily for this ornament of our lakes. 
The White Nymphaea might indeed be termed “ Queen of the 
Lakes,” for truly she sits in regal pride upon her watery 
throne, a very queen among flowers. Very lovely are the 
Waiter-lilies of England, but their fair sisters of the New 
‘World excel them in size and fragrance. 
t Many of the tribe to which these plants belong are natives 
of the Torrid Zone, but our White Water-lilies (Nymphea 
odorata and tuberosa) and the Yellow Pond-lilies (Nuphar 
advena, lutea and Kalmiana) only are able to support the 
cold winters of Canada. The depth of the water in which 
they grow enables them to withstand the cold, the frost 
rarely penetrating to their roots, which in the Nympheas 
are rough and knotted, white and fleshy, and often as thick 
as a man’s wrist. The root-stock is horizontal, sending 
many fibrous slender rootlets into the soft mud; the stems 
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