Contemporary Circumscription Compared with A Utah Flora 4th ed.

Bio430

Nymphaeaceae

No differences.

Key Features

Perennial aquatic herbs with large rhizomes, not free floating.  Plants have milky sap, long petiolate leaves with floating blades.  Flowers are large, showy, and solitary with few to many petals, many laminar stamens, and one pistal of  five to many carpels that vary in degree of connation.  The ovary is superior, or sometimes inferior, and stamens may intergrade into petals.  The fruit is a spongy berry or nutlets.