An ancient aquatic flower of Asia whose pristine pink blooms rise on long stems above muddy ponds and have anchored religious symbolism for millennia.
Where it grows
The sacred lotus colonises slow rivers, ponds, and flooded paddies from Iran east to Japan and south to northern Australia. Rhizomes survive being deeply buried; seeds remain viable for over a millennium. Commercial cultivation centres on China, where roots and seeds are staple foods, and on Thailand and Vietnam for cut flowers.
How to recognise it
Round, blue-green leaves up to sixty centimetres across stand a metre or more above the water surface on long stalks, their surface a self-cleaning waxy nanostructure that water and dirt simply roll off. Pink to white flowers, up to thirty centimetres across, open in the morning and close at night for three days before petals drop, leaving the iconic perforated seedpod.
Garden & cultural uses
In Asian kitchens, lotus root is sliced and stir-fried, the seeds are sugared as candy, and the leaves wrap glutinous rice for steaming. The pink lotus is the national flower of India and Vietnam, and the throne of countless Buddhas and Hindu deities.
In symbolism
The lotus’s emergence pristine from muddy water is the central Buddhist metaphor for enlightenment arising from a flawed world.
Find more flowers by letter
Lotus starts with L and ends with S. Browse other flowers along the same letter.
Flowers that contain a letter from "Lotus":