How did Native Americans use waterlilies?
By Chelsie Vandaveer
June 30, 2003
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The fragrant white waterlily (Nymphaea odorata Aiton) is native to temperate and tropical North America. The floating leaves and flowers arise from the tip of a thick rhizome (horizontal stem) submerged on a lake or stream bottom. The waxy flowers grace the early morning hours of the summer months. They open with dawn and are closed by mid-day.
It is reported that in Canada, natives boiled and ate the young and tender leaves of the waterlily as "greens". The rhizomes produced a dark brown dye used both by Native Americans and early settlers for cloth and other goods. In American Medicinal Plants, Charles Millspaugh (1892) reported "the goods thus dyed retain their color admirably."
The waterlily rhizomes were used externally and internally. The rhizome macerated and laid over wounds staunched bleeding; Millspaugh wrote, "its styptic properties were fully known and utilized." Poultices of leaves and roots treated boils, ulcerated wounds, and inflamed skin. The juice extracted from waterlily rhizomes substituted for soap and was said to rid pimples. As a tea or extracted with ethanol, waterlily rhizome treated ulcers in the mouth and throat.
Native American women used waterlily decoctions, both internally and as douches, to treat leucorrhea and uterine cancer. In the 1870s, Dr. John King reported of a case he had witnessed. "I recollect a lady, who, several years since, was pronounced by several physicians to have uterine cancer, which resisted all their treatment, she was permanently cured by a squaw (derogatory term for a female Native American), who gave her to drink freely of the decoction of a root, which proved to be that of the white pond-lily...." (King's American Dispensatory, Felter and Lloyd, 1898) Other than declaring the woman cured, apparently neither King nor anyone else investigated the waterlily treatment.
The Institute for Systematic Botany, University of South Florida has numerous photographs of the fragrant white waterlily (Nymphaea odorata). To view the photographs, click on the link:
http://www.plantatlas.usf.edu/main.asp?plantID=2277
Click on the Images tab, then on the thumbnails to enlarge the images.
killerPlants Tendrils: ~~1~~2~~3~~4~~5~~
Suggested Reading:
Why are canna flowers so unusual? Weird Plants - September 26, 2002
How did a flower cause an economic disaster? Plants that Changed History - April 2, 2002
What plant commemorates the death of a dragon? Herbal Folklore - March 11, 2002
How does this waterlily protect its seeds? Renfield's Garden - July 2, 2003
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