This lifeform is found east of the Continental Divide in North America. The white color will help identify this lifeform. This lifeform is found in freshwater such as lakes or rivers. This lifeform is locally common in suitable environments.

White Tuberous Water Lily (Nymphaea tuberosa) is found almost throughout eastern North America. The familiar floating lily pads are a common sight in almost all places where there is standing fresh water between two and six feet deep. The large flower is very beautiful. Three species involved:

Nymphaea odorata is typically found north in places such as Canada and south in places such as Florida and Louisiana. The original edition of Britton and Brown states that the flowers are typically three to six inches broad.

The flowers of the White Water Lily that have been found west of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in the Lake Beaulah area, are much smaller (five inches) than those found in northern Illinois. The pads from Lake Beaulah are also slightly purple underneath. These two characteristics would indicate N. odorata. However, the petioles from Beaulah have six dark and six faint purple streaks which would indicate N. tuberosa. Some botanists consider the odorata-tuberosa complex to be all a single species.

Nymphaea tetragona, the small white water lily, is rare and is found from northern Maine to Lake Superior and west to Idaho. The flowers are only two to five centimeters (one to two inches) broad. It is also found in Siberia and Japan.

Nymphaea tuberosa is found in a narrow latitude band from New Jersey, west to Nebraska and Arkansas. The flowers are typically quite large. The original edition of Britton and Brown states flowers are from four to nine inches broad.

Nymphaea elegans, Blue Water Lily, is found in southern Texas. A distinctive feature of this plant is that the flower is raised over the water.

Nymphaea mexicana, Mexican Water Lily, is sometimes called the Banana Water Lily. Its flowers are yellow and found in southern and eastern Texas.

Nymphaea genus (water-lily) is found almost worldwide.  There are over 50 species in this genus.  These aquatic perennial herbs usually have large tuberous roots and floating leaves.  The singular flowers frequently float upon the surface of the water.  There are 12 species and four subspecies growing in greater North America.

Water Lily Family (Nymphaceaceae) are a distinctive group of plants usually characterized by floating leaves and large exotic flowers. The 90 species are limited to freshwater and most regions of the earth have their representative species. The water lily family has two genera with 13 species growing in greater North America.

Ranales Order has been broken down into nineteen different  families. The water lilies, buttercups, magnolias, and other groups are included in this order. Large pretty flowers seem to be a common characteristic of this order.

Dicots (Dicotyledoneae Class) are the predominant group of vascular plants on earth. With the exception of the grasses (Monocots) and the Conifers (Gymnosperms), most of the larger plants that one encounters are  Dicots. Dicots are characterized by having a seed with two outer shell coverings. Some of the more primitive Dicots are the typical hardwood trees (oaks, birches, hickories, etc). The more advanced Dicots include many of the Composite Family flowers like the  Dandelion, Aster, Thistles, and Sunflowers. Although many Monocots reach a very high degree of specialization, most botanists feel that the Dicots represent the most advanced group of plants.

Seed plants (Phylum Embryophyta) are generally grouped into one large phylum containing three major classes: the Gymnosperms, the Monocots, and the Dicots. (Some scientists separate the Gymnosperms into a separate phylum and refer to the remaining plants as flowering plants or Angiospermae.)

For North American counts of the number of species in each genus and family, the primary reference has been John T. Kartesz, author of A Synonymized Checklist of the Vascular Flora of the United States, Canada, and Greenland (1994). The geographical scope of his lists include, as part of greater North America, Hawaii, Alaska, Greenland, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands.

Kartesz lists 21,757 species of vascular plants comprising the ferns, gymnosperms and flowering plants as being found in greater North America (including Alaska, Hawaii, Greenland, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands).

There are estimates within the scientific world that about half of the listed North American seed plants were originally native with the balance being comprised of Eurasian and tropical plants that have become established.

Plant kingdom contains a large variety of different organisms including mosses, ferns, and seed plants. Most plants manufacture their energy from sunlight and water. Identification of many species is difficult in that most individual plants have characteristics that have variables based on soil moisture, soil chemistry, and sunlight.

Because of the difficulty in learning and identifying different plant groups, specialists have emerged that study only a limited group of plants. These specialists revise the taxonomy and give us detailed descriptions and ranges of the various species.  Their results are published in technical journals and written with highly specialized words that apply to a specific group.

On the other hand, there are the nature publishers. These people and companies undertake the challenging task of trying to provide easy to use pictures and descriptions to identify those species.