N. 'Hickory Bend Serendipity'.
Descriptions by Charles Leach.
Hickory Bend Serendipity arrived as two fully grown plants from a nursery we sometimes deal with. The lilies we ordered had rather ordinary blue flowers but from previous experience we knew it produced viable seeds we could work with. Unfortunately it was not a variety that did well long term here in the north.When the plants got around to blooming the initial flowers were uniform dark purple so we e-mailed the nursery to warn them that they had a problem, not to complain. What we got as a reply was "Sounds like a bee beat us to the punch...it happens sometimes---we just have to go in and weed the buggers out". When later flowers developed the striking contrast between the dark plum purple sepals and far lighter blue petals I e-mailed the nursery suggesting that they save the "buggers" instead of weeding them out because I thought they might have something special and sent photos but got no reply. As it turned out, H.B. Serendipity does what the plants we ordered originally does quite well and then some. It produces lots of fertile seeds and has become our go to source of pollen plus it thrives here with our zone 6 growing conditions. Hickory bend Serendipity is a non viviparous, day blooming, tropical waterlily. It has medium blue 5-6" (12.7- 15,2 cm) flowers with deep plum purple sepals that make for a striking contrast. Leaf spread is 4'- 6' ( 120 -180 cm). Leaves are green with reddish brown flecks.