The Missouri Botanical Garden was sent this heavyweight champion trophy for its win. MUST CREDIT: Denver Botanic Gardens
Victoria water lilies are among the largest in the world, spanning up to 10 feet in the Amazon rainforest with sturdy leaf pads that can easily support a small child.
It turns out the strongest ones can support an adult-size person, too.
In a contest of brute strength and stability, one of the giant floating wonders in Missouri held a whopping 142 pounds of sand.
"They really look like they’re from an alien planet,” said Greta Berg, a horticulturist at the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis, which took home the top prize in a recent water lily strength contest.
In the United States, more than a dozen botanical gardens have Victoria water lilies, including Kenilworth Park & Aquatic Gardens in D.C., Brookgreen Gardens near Myrtle Beach, S.C., Longwood Gardens near Philadelphia and Denver Botanic Gardens.
The idea for the contest started in 2021, when horticulturists at the Denver gardens came up with a zany idea: How about they put a bunch of sandbags on one of their giant lily pads to see how much weight it could hold?
Employees piled 89 pounds of sand on to one of the garden’s Victoria lily pads before it began to sink.
The lily pond at the Missouri Botanical Garden. MUST CREDIT: Nathan Kwarta
"It was such a fun experiment that we decided to turn it into a contest and include other botanical gardens with giant lily displays,” said Erin Bird, associate director of communications for Denver Botanic Gardens.
Earlier this year, the Denver garden put out the word to botanical gardens worldwide about a giant water lily weigh-off in August. Seventeen gardens with Victoria lilies joined the challenge, including the New York Botanical Garden and Kew Gardens in London.
During a two-week period in August, the competitors recorded their weighty endeavors and posted the results on TikTok.
Horticulturists in Denver then tallied the results and awarded first place to the five-foot Missouri water lily, which took on water once it shouldered 142.1 pounds.
Second place went to a Victoria lily at the Naples Botanical Garden in Florida for holding 135 pounds, while the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh took third place honors with a water lily that held 105.8 pounds.
Berg and her colleague Claire Krofft said it’s a point of pride that their St. Louis lily won top prize.
"We definitely had a pretty cool high-five moment,” Berg said.
She and Krofft, a senior horticulturist, regularly put on waders and climb into an outdoor heated pond to care for the garden’s water lilies, including seven giant Victoria lilies.
"Every January, we start seeds in the greenhouse, then we move the plants outside in the spring,” said Krofft, 28, explaining that the lilies are fertilized twice a week.
She and Berg believe the reason their lilies have thrived is because of Missouri’s long and hot summers.
"They love the warmth,” Krofft said. "In the wild, it isn’t uncommon for them to grow an inch an hour. We don’t get that here, but they still grow fast. One day, you’ll come outside, and they’ll suddenly be gigantic.”
Berg said she uses a plunger to add fertilizer to the plants’ underwater pots to avoid getting cut by the prickly undersides of the lily pads.
:A close-up look at the thorny underside of a Victoria water lily leaf. MUST CREDIT: Missouri Botanical Garden
"The entire underside of the leaves are covered in super-sharp thorns,” she said. "So if you’re not careful, you can get stabbed.”
On Aug. 29, the day of the big weigh-in, she and Krofft suited up in waterproof garb and gradually added 20-pound bags of sand to one of their hardiest lily pads. They also used some gym weights contributed by one of their colleagues.
"The reason these plants can hold so much weight is because of their unique latticelike structure underneath that’s almost like a buttressing,” Krofft said.
"They’re filled with air, so they create a buoyancy, but they’re also quite strong and structurally sound.”
Claire Krofft and Greta Berg found this undated turn-of-the-century photo in the garden archives. MUST CREDIT: Missouri Botanical Garden
She and Berg had seen an old photo in the Missouri Botanical Garden archives of a woman standing on a giant lily pad, and they said they often see ducks and frogs sunning themselves on the pads in the pond.
But they were stunned when their mighty Victoria lily stayed afloat as they added on the pounds.
"We kept adding weights until the leaves showed signs it was going to buckle,” said Berg. "It was pretty awesome to reach 142.1 pounds.”
The weights didn’t damage the lily, and she and Krofft said the leaf popped back to its normal shape once the sandbags were removed.
In celebration of the Missouri lily’s outsize strength, Denver Botanic Gardens mailed Berg and Krofft a heavyweight champion trophy topped with a plastic water lily. KSDK News was among the local news outlets to cover the first-place honors.
"It’s going to be a traveling trophy, so we’ll have to see if we can top it off next year with another win,” Berg said.
"The most exciting thing of all is that the contest provided a great opportunity for people to learn more about these massive, fascinating plants,” she said.
