White water lily with scrolled leaf

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Water lilies are appealing in their own right, of course, but what further intrigued me here was the way a leaf of this plant had risen out of the water and formed a scroll (which some of you may anthropomorphize into the top of a cowboy boot).

Nymphaea odorata is a white-flowered water lily native in Texas and most other American states as well as parts of Canada and Mexico.

This is the fifth in a series of pictures I took at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center on July 23, and the first in these pages ever to show a water lily.

© 2013 Steven Schwartzman