Birth flower
Water lily
Nymphaea. In the language of flowers, as lists print it today, it stands for purity, the reading Kate Greenaway printed for it in 1884. It is a custom of sentiment, not a scientific or official designation.
- Latin name
- Nymphaea
- Month
- July
- Meaning today
- purityThe same reading Kate Greenaway printed in 1884.
The plant itself
Nymphaea is a genus. The figures below are for one species of it, Nymphaea alba, the European white water lily.
| Family | Nymphaeaceae |
|---|---|
| Native to | Europe to the western Himalaya and north-west Africa |
| Habit | perennial |
| Height | floats on the surface; spread 1–1.5 m |
| Flowers | June to September |
Water lilies sit almost at the base of the flowering-plant family tree: the order Nymphaeales is one of the three lineages of the ANA grade, which diverged earliest from the line leading to all other flowering plants, a position confirmed by the sequencing of a Nymphaea genome in 2020.
Where the names come from
The English name, first found in the mid-1400s as water-lelie, is simply water and lily, for an aquatic plant with round floating leaves and large flowers. The genus name, Nymphaea, came through Latin from the Greek numphaia, from numphaios, sacred to the nymphs. Lily itself is the Old English lilie, from the Latin lilia, the plural of lilium, a word related to the Greek leirion; both are perhaps borrowed from an eastern Mediterranean word.
Where the meaning is written down
- As the dictionary prints it
- Purity of heartUnder the heading “Water Lily” in Kate Greenaway, Language of Flowers, 1884.
- As lists print it today
- PurityThe same reading, in today's wording.
Greenaway gives "purity of heart"; the modern "purity" is the same reading, shortened.
Is it poisonous?
No authority has published a finding either way: it is not in the ASPCA's database and carries no Royal Horticultural Society harm rating. That is an absence of evidence, not a clean bill of health.
This is general information and not veterinary advice — if an animal or a person has eaten part of a plant, ring a vet or a poison line rather than reading a website.