The lotus may be Vietnam’s national flower but, in the country’s Mekong Delta, it’s the waterlily, a similar though unrelated plant, that draws crowds of visitors to witness its harvest each fall. For several weeks between August and November, depending on the intensity of the year’s monsoons, farmers and other locals, mostly women, wade through murky shallows at dawn to collect the day-blooming Nymphaea nouchali and the night-blooming Nymphaea rubra, the two varieties most commonly found in Africa and Asia. There are roughly 85 species in the waterlily family, Nymphaeaceae, native to temperate and tropical climates around the world and descendants of the planet’s oldest flowering plants. Fossilized seeds found in northern Japan in 1997 are believed to be about 85 million years old. In ancient Egypt, pharaohs, including King Tutankhamen (circa 1341-23 B.C.), were buried with blue waterlilies. A staple of the culture (used for food and medicine), the flowers also symbolized immortality and were said to have been valued for their psychedelic properties during funeral rites.
Though most abundant in the wild come fall, the flowers are cultivated by Vietnamese farmers year-round. The rangy stalks, typically an inch in diameter and measuring up to five feet long, root easily in most muddy, nonsaline bodies of water, often growing alongside lotuses. Both come in a variety of colors, though the petals of waterlilies — pointier than those of the lotus — tend to feature more vivid shades of pink, purple and red that float just above their glossy, shield-shaped leaves. Wild waterlilies are generally white. Each flower blooms for a few hours a day (or night) over the course of three to five days before sinking beneath the surface and dropping its seeds. In the early hours of the morning, at certain temperatures, there’s a brief window when the night bloomers are open at the same time as the day bloomers, which emit a plummy, soapy fragrance. Marc Hachadourian, the director of glasshouse horticulture at the New York Botanical Garden, says that it resembles the smell of Juicy Fruit chewing gum. That’s when the farmers and local foragers pull up the lilies by their fibrous stems and pile them onto canoelike wooden sampans to be transported to nearby markets.
Over the years, the harvest ritual and the spectacle of the women paddling boats laden with waterlilies have become a popular photo op, a staple of guided tours, but the flowers themselves remain an intrinsic part of everyday life. The blossoms decorate homes throughout the country, often seen floating in clay pots on doorsteps, while the stems are used in fish soups and stir-fries. It isn’t just the plant’s versatility that makes it a mainstay in Vietnamese society, says Thao Phan, the owner of an urban gardening business in Ho Chi Minh City — it’s an enduring beacon of resilience. “The waterlily doesn’t die,” says Phan. “After it finishes blooming, you might think it’s dead, but it comes back. Once you plant it, you have it forever.”
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