Nymphaeaceae

Water Lily Family

Pond Lily

FAMILY: Water lily family (Nymphaeaceae) – Nuphar genus.

SPECIES: Rocky Mountain yellow pond lily (Nuphar lutea (L.) Sm. ssp. polysepala (Engelm.) E. O. Beal = Nuphar polysepala Engelm.).

TO UTILIZE AS FOOD: The rhizomes, leaves, flowers, and seeds of Rocky Mountain yellow pond lily are edible, but only the seeds are palatable. Cooking is recommended to avoid issues with waterborne parasites.

Rhizomes of Rocky Mountain yellow pond lily taste absolutely horrible. Fresh rhizomes are spongy, white with yellow veins, 3-6 cm thick by several meters long, deeply buried in pond scum, and remarkably buoyant. In fact, it’s a wonder they stay buried. Exactly how repulsive they taste cannot be overstated. It’s a flavor several orders of magnitude beyond unpalatable. No amount of cooking helps. Even after a fourth change of water, distasteful saponins persist. Any carbohydrate value is lost in the wastewater. Spices offer no hope. Overall, pond lily rhizomes are best left in the pond!

Leaves of Rocky Mountain yellow pond lily are basically worthless as food. Emerging young leaves are curled and may qualify as palatable after thorough cooking, but don’t count on it. The flavor isn’t one suggesting that any food value is present, and the texture stubbornly resists chewing. Long leafstalks arising from the rhizomes taste about the same. They have a spongy texture that’s more gum-like than food-like.

Flowers of Rocky Mountain yellow pond lily are essentially worthless as food, except for the petals. The mushroom-like flower buds and tower-like stigmatic disks are merely repositories of phlegm-like slime and hideous flavor. The colorful yellow sepals, for which these plants were named, have a chewable texture and an acrid flavor. Of all the herbaceous parts, only the actual petals rank as palatable, and they barely make this rank. At best, the petals are unappealing and totally void of sweetness (those were the good points). The petals, along with the stamens, can easily be pulled off the stigmatic disks, but gathering these parts is hardly worth the effort.

Seeds of Rocky Mountain yellow pond lily taste vastly superior to other parts. They’re contained within leathery fruit structures that look somewhat like nuclear power cooling towers with rims. Mature seeds are hard (or at least firm) and immersed in slime. Seeds appearing fleshy are still developing. Actual seeds are whitish-tan. Drying the fruit structures is necessary to release the seeds from the chambers. The seeds won’t simply fall out of the chambers because the slime acts like glue until it dries. Dried parts are much easier to work with. Toasted seeds taste delicious. The flavor is starchy, fatty, and almost free of harsh overtones. Toasting seems preferable to boiling. Well-developed seeds burst when toasted, forming popcorn-like fluff with delicate black shells. Toasted seeds are completely chewable. Boiled seeds form a cloudy, murky, greenish-brown broth with a peculiar aroma failing to inspire thoughts of food. The broth isn’t too bad, but it can be rather astringent (potentially as astringent as acorns). Boiling draws astringency out of the seeds and into the broth. Toasting tends to mask the astringency. Salt and butter offer a substantial improvement regardless of cooking method. Gathering the buoyant seed heads is easy. They won’t sink into the pond after cutting the stems. Overall, Rocky Mountain yellow pond lily seeds are a fair resource, but the plants are rare in the Southwest.

IDENTIFICATION: Depending on the source of information, in the United States, the Nuphar genus consists of 8 species, or 1 species (N. lutea) with 8 subspecies. Only the polysepala species/subspecies reaches the Southwest.

Description of Rocky Mountain yellow pond lily (Nuphar polysepala): FORM aquatic plant emerging from a thick rhizome; LEAVES simple; alternate, although appearing spirally arranged and arising directly from the rhizomes; stalks long and rounded in cross section; blades rounded and floating; margins smooth; tips rounded, pointed, or notched; surfaces shiny and hairless; FLOWERS regular, perfect, ovary superior, globe-shaped, about 4-7 cm wide, and arranged individually on long stalks; sepals 6-12, yellow, free, rounded at the tips, and appearing like petals; actual petals appearing like stamens, numerous, yellow, free, oblong, and arranged in spirals around the pistils; pistils 1, with 3-35 cells; stigmatic disks usually green; stigmatic rays 8-25; stamens numerous, yellow; FRUITS capsules berry-like, greenish-yellow, leathery, slimy, spongy, and rounded; SEEDS 2-5 mm long; HABITAT shallow water; California to Alaska, and scattered in the Rocky Mountains; blooming April to September.

REFERENCES: Rocky Mountain yellow pond lily (Nuphar lutea ssp. polysepala = Nuphar polysepala): rhizomes Couplan (pp. 45-46) and Moerman (pp. 161-162); leaves Fern (pp. 129-130); flowers (beverage) Fern (pp. 129-130); seeds Couplan (pp. 45-46), Moerman (pp. 161-162), and others.