Needless to Say, N is for Nelumbo, the Sacred Lotus

Date: Author: Category: Discipline Exercises, Living Abroad, Sri Lanka, Travel, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , ,

… or as we say in Sinhala, Nelum, which is so close to the Latin Nelumbo, that it makes me wonder what the Sanskrit word is?  Anyone?

Today’s post is simply a small gallery of my favourite flower in all its glory,    From temples to stately gardens, a tin can in the sun beside the front door, or any of the myriad lakes, large and small, lotus grow in abundant profusion.

 The pot I have at my front door is a Thai miniature,

And here she was this morning …

60 thoughts on “Needless to Say, N is for Nelumbo, the Sacred Lotus”

    • Ahhha! I didn’t realise, till I eventually had my own, how much I loved them. I know now I’ll never be able to live so far south (in Oz) that they won’t grow. Perhaps I’ll have to camp out at Dadirri7’s – she grows them in her dam. 🙂

      • it’s amazing, isn’t it, how close within we are to the world around us, like when you realize you can’t live without a particular flower. I would love to return to Britain, but if I am amongst trees here, I can survive. Though really, I’d prefer further south like Tassie – which has hte most wonderful trees – to escape the thick drought heat of the summers here.

        • That dry, out of the furnace, heat must get at you, even in Mt. Lawleyshire I remember it well, and not so fondly, I might add, though the forests of the SW corner didn’t seem quite as bad as Perth.
          For me, I’m totally affected by my surroundings, and have found there are things I can manage without, and others I can’t. I hope I manage to die if I can’t find a final resting spot that suits me – silly thing to say – with all that wonderful world out there, full of things that please me greatly:)
          Don’t go back to Blighty:(

          • what you remember of the south west has changed – frought & dying trees & potential coal mines under Margret River, built up Denmark – & no, sadly old Blighty’s not an aption unless you have scards of money. I’m hoping for Tassie. & I’m also affected by the things around me, and the heat in MtLawleyShire is pretty foul. 40 in Marhc? Yep. near 30 in mid May? Yep. Tomorrow! & humid. Bleh! I hope you find your place, when those beautiful flowers grow 🙂

            • How long was the drought in the West, then? And a coal mine under Margaret River? Oh goodness, they’ll plough it up for sure – the great mine of the West. It’s interesting how much things do change over time. I can remember the first time I went to Bali, everybody saying “Oh, Bali’s not what it used to be”, and indeed how could it have been? But I liked it and it sustained me for holidays for a few years, if that was as much as I could afford. But the thing is, I look back on so many of the places I used to know, and most of them have changed beyond recognition. I think I must be getting old!

              • as am I – getting old 🙂 The coal mine is presently forbidden, but Autralia’s stripping itself & poisoning most of itself at such a rate for the almight bloody $ that I doubt that will last. To hell with the water the mine would poison! Tassie has problems too, but at least it still rains properly in winter. By the time the rain stops there (as it is forecast to stop over the entire south of Austrlia as the jet stream sticks closer to Antarctica in the coming decades) I’ll either be gone or too old to care 😦

  5. What exotic beauty! (And thanks for posting that reminder–the box didn’t show up! I guess we have to pull together as a blogging community to squelch the flow of comments that is overrunning our inboxes. 😉 )

  7. my very favourite flower, and i grow them in the dam by the house, a constant source of pleasure in all their different stages of growth … now just dried pods as winter approaches 🙂

    • I thought I detected a kindred lotus lover! You’re mid NSW? I was just saying to Robin Jean Marie that if/when I go home, I won’t be able to live where I can’t have my lotus pot (I won’t be greedy and demand a dam full!), so I’d be interested to know how far south they will grow.

  9. Lovely photos. All it’s glory is indeed glorius. The seond last photo looks super-real. I love the Thai miniature at your front door. Lotus are great, they look so delicate but I guess in the right conditions, they must be reasonably robust as we see so many in dams, on golf courses…

    • I’ve noticed that, Madhu, particularly in India, where all I remember at the temples is the pink. Why is that, do you know? Here pink does predominate, especially in temple ponds and stalls, but white is sold and I often see it in the wild. I remember going out in a canoe, just as dawn was sending fingers of light up to our world – water like molten gold, drunken dragon flies bumbling from flower to flower … I have a shot I scanned from a print – tears, and gnashing to teeth – but it’s flecked with imperfections:(

    • Oh my dear, how perfectly wonderful, and so kind of you! Many, many thanks, I accept gladly. I have a little stack of unfulfilled acceptance speeches waiting in my inbox, and now, with the Kreativ, you’ve forced my hand – I MUST get to work and draw up those dreaded lists. It’s so pretty! Thank you. Oh, by the way, you know I’m Australian, but did you know I lived in Toronto for nearly ten years and married a French Canadian? So your Canadian ‘mafia’ thing is a little closer to reality than you thought … 🙂

    • Oh well, at least you van go to Kew and see Lotus and other tropical exotics. Here, people pine for temperate climate flowers, subjecting roses for instance, to the humidity and heat of Colombo. You should see the poor things struggling and succumbing to the most awful mildew diseases:( But, up in the mountains, the farms around Nuwara Eliya produce beautiful Asiatic lilies, and chrysanthemums galore for the florist shops of the city. To buy lotus, I go to the temples where sellers have buckets full every day.

  16. The lotus is special. I can see that from the way you frame them and use the light. I wonder whether they would grow in a pot in South Texas? I have to read about them. I always loved the representation of them is Japanese literature.

      • We get lots of lovely, hot sunshine! We do get the occasional frost, but I would plan to cover it or bring it indoors. Thanks for reminding me of the lotus. I love your blog, BTW. I follow you, but I forget to come over! I plead old age when it suits me, you know. 😉 Now, you have set me off to find a lotus! 🙂

        • why not see if you can get one this weekend? But first you need your pot – big it must be Texas big …
          Ps So glad you like my blog. Wish I could be more consistently compelling to force you across every day!

          • I have Texas Big pots. I am going on a mission to discover a lotus plant this very weekend! Thanks for the idea! 🙂 I’ll keep you posted.

            • Please do. I’l be interested to see which you choose – a white, or a pink, miniature or will you fall for those huge leaves? By the way, when I bought my miniature, I transplanted it into a fairly big dish shaped pot which I then put at the bottom of my big pot. This way the precious mud didn’t dissipate across the bottom of the big pot, thus keeping the bulb all together, if you know what I mean?

            • (oops, hit reply too soon!). This way it was simple to slip a couple of newspaper-wrapped parcels of fertiliser down under the lotus roots so they could decompose without affecting the fish – because of course, you’ll need some little mosquito eating fish to keep your pot safe, eh?

              • Gold fish, I assume, would do. They are hardy and live in all kinds of temperatures. We have them in our cattle water troughs at the shop. What kind of fertilizer?

                • Sure, goldfish would do – there are far smaller fish that do a better job at eating mosquito lava and don’t require any special attention. That’s what I use, anyway. The other thing I forgot to mention is that I also have some of that teensy tiny two leafed floating plant – it gives protection for the fish – you’d be surprised at how the birds get to know there’s fish in your lotus pot (another reason the smaller fish – rather than gold fish are a better bet). These floating type plants also help clean and oxygenate the water, keeping it nice and fresh for the fish. Fertilizer: thee are special pellets/disks/spikes for aquatic plants, but I found they fouled the water too much. I get a tablespoon of any flower-inducing slow release pellets and neatly wrap them in a sheet of newspaper.

                  • Thank you so MUCH. I think I know precisely how to do this now. I have two African dwarf frogs that are less than an inch long now. I have to shop for some things for their habitat this weekend too. How do I accumulate stuff to feed and care for, I wonder. Sigh… I am excited about the lotus project now! Thank you.

                • Dadimi7 won’t be feeding the lotus in her dam, but I’ve found in a pot they need feeding every two months (during the growing season) to keep up a fairly steady supply of flowers.

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