Beautiful Water Flowers in Sri Lanka

 Taking into consideration ‘Nelum’ Englishmen calls it  Lotus -   famous water flowers which blossoms in Sri Lanka.  This is a beautiful pink coloured flower, which slowly petals out to the sun light which has a mild perfumery scent. There are some Lotus flowers can see in White color. It has many petals. From flower to flower the number of petals changes. Ancient poets call  it a hundred pealed flower.  It is a large flower.

Sri Lanka’s national flower is “ Manel”. This flower can see in deferent colours. But the  correct National Flower is in sky blue colour.  This flower is another beauty which dominates the Sri Lankan waters. This flower grows in the shallow water. Most people calls this as blue water lily. This blooms from the dawn till evening. The colour of the flower is blue and occasionally pinkish and purple. For villagers stem and seeds are a curry for    their daily meal. 

The other flower is “OLu” . Its in white colour. This blooms in around 10-11  the night and fades away by 11.00 a.m. in the morning, it emanates a sweet fragrance.   In the middle of the flower the seeds are collected by villages and they boil them as rice. There is medicinal value in this flower. The boiled seeds are very cooling to the body.

The next beauty in Sri Lankan waters are 'kumudu” These flowers petal out in the nights with a sweet smell. It is quite a dainty and a delicate pealed flower and you do not find these flowers any where  in the world. Unlike the other water flowers, these pop out in one or two in numbers at a time, but the sweet scent emanates distant far.

The botanical name  ’Aponogeton Crispum’ , in Sinhala words  “Kekatiya” is an another beauty of the Sri Lankan waters. This flower depicts a style of an old man’s walking stick. It has a long stem about one feet, and about 6” covers with tiny yellow coloured flowers as a rod. These creeps on top of all the water flowers as it is taller than the rest. These are grown in large bushes in the water. It is a tasty curry dish with rice and very cooling to the body.

All the above mentioned five types of flowers you do not find any where in the world, although Sri Lankans concentrates to maintain these beauties in the waters, other countries do not care much about the water beauties.

In the early mornings, if a traveler wanders or travels in villages of Sri Lanka, he will find these little beauties studded  like a picture in the blue waters above the water level smiling with the up rising sun, when the “kumudu” and “olu” goes to their slumbers during day time and wakes up in the night.

If one could watch the waters with the colours  dark and light pink large lotuses, white “Olu” sprinkled all over the blue waters like tiny birds floating in the water, Blue Manel flower being tinted all over the blue waters which had been tinted by the fairies in the night, the Mother Sri Lanka, offers all these to Lord Buddha or decorates shrines and at these times uses even for wedding ceremonies and table décor of hotels of Sri Lanka.

Other than our own water beauties, Since of late Sri Lankan waters have been invaded by water plants which have been introduced by immigrants during war time in 1940s, although it gives colour to Sri Lankan water.