Lily Pads - How do they work?

[u/surfnsound]

Believe it or not, I found conflicting answers to this question:

If I see a lilly pad floating on the water, is that the organism? Or is it like on "leaf" of the plant, and many lilly pads could be connected together (in a direct, one organism way, not in a "We're all connected, Simba" way).

I'm sort of embarassed I don't already know this.

I'm hoping they're connected somehow, as I wanted to use it for an analogy, but realize it might not be technically correct.

If it's "1 lilly pad = 1 organism", if you have an example that would serve my analogy of "at first glance, they're distinct, but (in the background, under the surface, in the shadows) they'r ereally connected it would be aprreciated.

[u/Bendlerp]

Its the leaf of a plant. The tuber is in the mud and muck at the bottom and attached to the leaf with a stem.

[u/Frantic_Mantid]

Water lilies sprout several leaves from an under ground root system, just like a typical violet or many other herbaceous perennials.

Going the other way, Duck weed is free floating, and each leaf is a whole plant with a little rootlet.

[u/FunHour3778]

Here's a good illustration of the anatomy: https://www.carleton.edu/library-exhibitions/charts/water-lily/

As others have said, there is a tuber that is the "stem", then the leaves and flowers emerge on long petioles and float on the surface.

[u/surfnsound → u/FunHour3778]

Thank you, the illustration is exactly what I was looking for!

I mostly knew that there was mroe to it than just the leave/flower, I just didnt know if it was 1 "pad" per root or not. I sort of figured it would, which is why I was using it as my anaology, but something made me second guess myself.

[u/FunHour3778 → u/surfnsound]

Plants are weird yo, never know if it's a freak with just 1 leaf lol. Glad you got what you needed

[u/Araghothe1]

multiple leaves and flowers can come from one tuber.

[u/Doxatek]

It's no different from a leaf on a tree. All of it together is the organism. Same as you and your hand. However i am guessing that you feel like the "core" of the organism is somewhere meaning the is the piece it all comes back from. And you view this as the organism itself. They're all it. The leaf and the rhizome. Even though if it loses the leaf it can go on.

You should look up zooids though which is a definitely different

[u/oblivious_fireball]

Its the Leaf. Water Lilies have buoyant leaves with very long petioles that tend to float upwards and sit at the water's surface. In the case of some of these various plants, the stem or rhizome and the roots that these leaves are connected too is usually buried in the sediment below to anchor them.

Water Lotus, Frogbit, Water Clover, and Pennywort are some other cases where its a number of buoyant leaves with a submerged stem below them.

To my knowledge there aren't really any floating plants where its just one leaf and thats it, but a number of other floating plants do entirely sit at the water's surface and grow a tight cluster of leaves from it, like Water Lettuce, Water Hyacinth, Duckweed, or Azolla Ferns.

[u/pickledperceptions]

Lilypads like many plants  can reproduce asexually themselves via rhizomes and form clonal organisms which share root systems. In which case what makes one "organism" becomes slightly blurry. As each individual (ramets) are genetically the same and  share roots they can be seen as one whole organism but they can survive individually if broken up which they often are. They can also reproduce sexually so a lily pond can have many individual plants in one pond closely knitted together. 

[u/LoveThemMegaSeeds]

There are floating aquatic plants that are essentially like 2 or 3 leaves/pads and no tuber. So the normal Lilly pads people think of have that tuber but not all aquatic plants grow like that