Blue Star Water Lily

Description:

A spectacular aquatic plant of many well-deserved names: Blue or Star or red-and-blue-star lotus; or Red-and-blue water lily, or blue star water lily or manel flower... Like all these names suggest, this spectacular plant is a water lily or lotus, whose flower mainly reddish blue in color... with large oval leaves that often cover completely the pond where they thrive - like in this case. By the way, this large pond

Habitat:

A large pond in northern Rakhine. The plant is very common throughout Indian sub-continent and south-east Asia, and popular as ornamental plant. In this case, this water lily was covering a rather large pond (actually people called it a pond; it looked more like a lake...) - and this pond is the place where we released a turtle from one of previous stories... (http://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/428...)

Notes:

Like most plants from Water Lily family, tubers and rhizomes are edibles (and appreciated roasted); young and tender leaves and flower peduncles too.