Nymphaea tetragona georgi, also known as Nymphaea tetragona, is a wild group of water lilies in the lakes of the Yunnan Plateau, which is produced in a few lakes on the lake and Cangshan in Eryuan County, Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture. Water lilies seem to be very ordinary, and they are widely cultivated in ponds and marshes, and the flowers are elegant and fragrant, but this flower is the only flower that is famous for its name.
In the legend of the local Bai nationality: there is a dragon king's daughter in the Xibi Lake who marries someone else, looks back at her hometown and tears falls, and the tears drop into the lake and turn into a white lotus, people call it "farewell lotus", and later pass it on as "Xibi Lotus", so the lake gets its name. Ancient books record: "Fifty miles to the west, the mountain of the valley, the Ershui flows out of Yan, and the west flows into Luo, among which there are many Xibi ("The Classic of Mountains and Seas, the Classic of the West Mountain"), and the Xibi Lake is ...... fifteen miles north of the cityThere are flowers that are said to be bi, such as lotus difference, leaves such as lotus money, taken as soup, and the taste is beautiful in Ulva. (Yunnan Tongzhi).
In recent years, human activities have intensified, and it is difficult to find wild water lilies in Xibi Lake, and the major lakes of the Yunnan Plateau have not seen their traces. With the support of the second comprehensive scientific investigation and research on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the special project of the National Science and Technology Basic Resources Investigation Project "Investigation and Germplasm Conservation of Wild Plants with Very Small Populations in Southwest China", and the conservation of rare and endangered plants in Yunnan Province of the China Environmental Protection Association, the comprehensive research and conservation team of wild plants with very small populations of Kunming Botanical Garden discovered wild populations of Lotus chinensis in the subalpine lakes around Xibi Lake in Dali in May 2020 and carried out ex situ conservation. The carefully cultivated population is looking forward to one day returning to its homeland and nature.
Author: Tao Lian.
*Provided by: Yu Hongyuan, Tao Lidan, Chen Zhifa, Guo Shiwei.
Producers: Kunming Botanical Garden, Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Yunnan Key Laboratory of Comprehensive Conservation of Wild Plants with Very Small Populations.