Nymphaeales
Waterlilies, water lotus, etc.
The Nymphaeales includes the waterlilies (Nymphaea), water lotus (Nelumbo), and fanworts (Cambomba). They are considered an ancestral flowering plant group with a mix of monocot and dicot traits (e.g. stem anatomy like dicots, plastid anatomy like monocots). The "paleoherb hypothesis" maintains that Nymphaeales are representative of the earliest members of the angiosperms; this idea claims that the earliest angiosperms were paleoherbs, a group of small plants that do not produce wood.
Above: Flower of Nymphaea, water lily
Above: Flower of Nelumbo, water lotus
Geologic Range
Leaves ascribed to this group found from the Albian
Brasenites, Aquatifolia, Scutifolium (Wang and Dilcher 2006, Taylor et al. 2008)
Fossils from this group includes large rhizomes, leaves, seeds, and flowers (e.g. Anoectomaria)
Unlike other ancestral angiosperms (e.g. Amborella and Austrobaileyales) Water lilies possess "ecophysiological features linked to aquatic, sunny habitats, such as the absence of a vascular cambium, ventilating stems and roots, and floating leaves tuned for high photosynthetic rates in full sun" (Feild et al. 2004).
Nymphaeales may represent an early radiation of angiosperms into aquatic environments
Classification
├Cabombaceae
├Hydatellaceae
└Nymphaeaceae