Indian Culture and Art: Continuity and Change 2 vol set (Hardcover)

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The Lotus in Indian Art, Thought and Literature
..................Devendra Handa
Lotus is the National flower of India. It is an aquatic plant (Nelumbo nucifera), a genus of the pea family (Fabaceae or Leguminosae), containing about 100 species. distributed in temperate regions of Europe, Asia, Africa, and North america. it is found abundantly in the tropical conditions in Asia, Australia and Queensland and research has revealed that its flowers blossom in temperature ranging from 30-35 degree Celsius (86-95 degree Farbeneit) and can regulate their temperature upto 10 degree centigrade (56 degree Fahrenheit). Some botanists think that like the warm-blooded animals the lotus maintains itself to attract cold-blooded insect pollionators. It has broad floating leaves and bright fragrant flowers. The leaves and flowers have long stems that contain air spaces.
The plant normally grows in muddy shallow waters up to a height of a bout 150 cm and has a horizontal spread of upto 3 meters, but some unverified reports place the height as high as over 5 meters. The round leaves may be as large as 60 cm. in diameter, while the showy flowers can be up to 20 cm in diameter. The leaves extend, in the Asian species, as much as 2 m (6.5 feet) above the water instead of floating on it. It has also been seen that sometimes the large attractive fragrant flowers of the lotus stand as much as 1.8 m above the water on strong leafless stalks. The flower has many petals overlapping in the symmetrical pattern.
They may be up to 25 cm across. The flower opens in the morning and the petals start withering off or falin in the afternoon and close at night. The plant's many nutlike fruits are produced in the flat upper surface of a spongy receptacle orexpanded, fleshy, capsule like structure, which is wider at the upper end than at the base. The whole structure dries at maturity, breaks off, and floats about, releasing the seeds, actually the true fruits, through numerous holes in the flat surface. The hard and dark brown seeds vary in shape from round to oval to oblong. They sink to the bottom and establish new plants. The dried receptacles are used by florists in flower arrangements.