Welcome to or welcome back to Bella’s World! My name is Lotus, I recently joined Bella’s World, and today, we are going to focus on a flower called lotus ( that’s me!). There is a variety of lotus throughout the entire world, so here are the main types. An Egyptian lotus (a white water lily). A Nymphaea lotus from the family Nymphaeaceae and West Africa, with beautiful leaves of green to red-brown and varying purple spots. It can grow from 20-80cm tall. Next, is the sacred lotus of the Hindus. This is an aquatic plant (a Nelumbo nucifera)and has white or delicate pink flowers. Its large, flat leaves, which can grow up to 80cm across, sit on the water surface on stalks up to 2m long. A blue lotus (N.caerulea) was a dominant lotus in Egyptian art. The leaves which are 30-40cm, have wavy margins and can alter form and texture depending on if under water or floating in the surface. The flowers can be blue, purple, white, mauve or pinkish in colour with a yellow centre and up to 15cm in diameter. An Eastern North America lotus ( Nelumbo pentapetala) has light yellow blossoms, with 20 or more sepals and petals to 8 inches across.

A Lotus tree (which was known to Romans as a Libyan lotus) was probably Celtis australis, the nettle tree of southern Europe; it is a member of the elm family. Lotus is a Latin name for a member of the pea family – 100 species at are distributed in temperate regions of Europe, Asia, Africa and North America. In North America, 20 or more species of Lotus occur and are called common names such as deervetch and deerclover. They are grazed on by animals. Lotus, in the water lily form, is a persistent ornament in architecture. A well-known example is its use in the capitals, a practise dating from ancient Egyptian times. Lotus is also the basis of the Assyrian sacred tree and the Phoenician stela capitals, which was the antecedent of the Ionic order of architectural design.

The lotus has, since ancient times, symbolised fertility and related ideas including the following: birth, purity, sexuality, rebirth of the dead, and, in astrology, the rising Sun.

By Lotus