Floating wonders.

Byline: Lewis Taylor The Register-Guard

The water lily known as the Victoria amazonica and its slightly smaller sibling, the Victoria cruziana, are two of the queens of the aquatic plant kingdom - exotic floating saucers that can grow up to 6 feet in diameter.

Also known as a platter lily, the Victoria blooms white at night, then turns a brilliant pink or red color. The plant has served as a showpiece in countless backyard ponds and botanical gardens ever since it was first cultivated by an English gardener in 1849.

But what if there were another species of the famous plant named after Queen Victoria? A dwarf variety with a white flower rumored to exist deep within the Rio Negro area of the Amazon River region?

Jim Purcell, co-owner of the west Eugene aquatic plant wholesaler Oregon Aquatics, thinks he and a group of fellow "plant nerds" may have discovered just such a lily while on a trip to the Brazilian Amazon earlier this year.

It will be several months before DNA studies confirm the plant is, in fact, a new species or subspecies, but based on what he has seen so far, Purcell is optimistic the new plant will check out.

"Word has definitely spread (within the aquatic plant community)," he says. "People who are interested in this kind of thing are very interested."

Nancy Styler, a Denver grower of Victorias, says she'll be eagerly awaiting the results of the DNA test. Because the plant is smaller than the two primary types of giant water lilies, she believes the new lily could be of interest to small pond owners who don't have the surface area to grow a full-sized Victoria.

"Win, lose or draw, we'll learn something," she says.

Purcell has yet to cultivate any of the plants from his Amazonian adventure at his west Eugene location - the seeds from the new plant are still held up in Brazilian customs - but he predicts he'll be growing the new species in his Eugene greenhouses sometime this summer. If it turns out to be a true species or subspecies, he believes the plant will retail for about $100.

Oregon Aquatics is one of the largest water plant sellers on the West Coast. The company supplies garden centers and specialty plant stores and has been in its Eugene location since 1990. The wholesaler also operates a second growing facility in Exeter, Calif.

In addition to Victorias, which make up a small percentage of the plants sold, Oregon Aquatics grows a few hundred water plants including big sellers such as water hyacinths and water lettuce.

Growing Victorias, Purcell says, is not a lucrative business.

"It's the largest and the most spectacular of the water lilies and it's challenging to grow," he says. "It's more for our reputation and for the fun of it."

Victorias are difficult to grow in captivity, particularly in nontropical environments such as Eugene, Purcell says. And without a variety of different seeds, the plants become more difficult to grow each year. If seeds are replanted from the same plant, the germination rate between the first and third year plummets from 97 percent to 58 percent.

"With the plant being grown in captivity with a limited gene pool, it will not continue to flourish through successive generations," Purcell said. "You need a fresh supply of seeds."

The search for fresh Victoria seeds is another reason Purcell went to Brazil. He and a group of about 20 plant specialists left in late January for a weeklong seed-gathering trip.

Purcell says shipping seeds has become more difficult since the government clamped down on imports after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. His group sought seed-gathering permits from the Brazilian government and importing permits from the U.S. government.

Initially, Purcell suspected the new Victoria plant might just be a smaller, underfed version of the other two species. The group located the new species after traveling up an isolated stream off the Rio Negro tributary of the Amazon River near the city of Manaus, Brazil.

Plants weren't the only living things Purcell and his group encountered on their trip. The travelers saw freshwater dolphins, sloths, tarantulas, caymans and other jungle critters.

Purcell even handled a deadly Fur-de-lance snake, something he says, in hindsight, he probably shouldn't have done.

Purcell also wasn't afraid of the biting fish in the river. He swam upstream through the tea-colored waters of the Rio Negro and was one of the first to examine the new water lily. He says he quickly ruled out the theory that the plant was merely a "nutritionally limited" colony of traditional Victorias.

"I thought, this looks completely different," Purcell recalls. "I thought, it's probably a different species, it's probably more than just a subspecies."

While the Victoria amazonica and the Victoria cruziana both have a pronounced lip around the outside of the lily pad, the new plant has no such border. Purcell believes the plant's smaller size allows it to maintain its shape more easily and doesn't require the additional structural integrity.

If, in fact, the plant discovered by Purcell and his group proves to be a new species or subspecies of Victoria, it would be big news for the aquatic plant community. The Victoria has a storied history dating back to the 1800s, when the Duke of Devonshire and the Duke of Northumberland competed with each other to be the first to grow one in captivity. Joseph Paxton, the gardener for the Duke of Devonshire and the first to grow a Victoria in captivity, based his design for the famous Crystal Palace on the ribbed undersurface of the water lily. The Crystal Palace housed the Great Exhibition in 1851.

Joe Tomacik, curator of the water gardens at the Denver Botanic Gardens, which grows several Victoria plants annually, says if the new plant turns out to be a subspecies, it will cause a small tidal wave of interest within the aquatic plant community.

"Anything new related to that plant is like igniting a fire," he said. "The Victoria is the grandest of all (the aquatic plants) ... People just marvel at it. I can't think of a plant that generates more attention. It's the main attraction."