Are Water Lilies Angiosperms?

Water lilies are basal angiosperms.

In the simplest terms, angiosperms are flowering plants. Since water lilies produce flowers, they are angiosperms. But there are several other qualities of angiosperms that water lilies share.

Angiosperms

Specifically, angiosperms form seeds encased in a fruit. This separates them from gymnosperms, which also produce seeds but leave them exposed. Angiosperms produce flowers with petals, sepals, stamens and carpels. Stamens produce pollen, while carpels contain the organs that receive pollen and become the fruit of the plant.

Water Lilies

The flowers of water lilies express sepals, petals, stamens and ovaries (carpels). The fruit of water lilies is spongy (helping it float) and berry in form. The seeds are enclosed within mucilage within the berry, marking water lilies as true angiosperms. The trouble in classifying water lilies comes in determining which kind of angiosperm they are.

Basal Angiosperms

Water lilies are unique among angiosperms in that they have characteristics of both monocots and dicots: the two groups into which all angiosperms used to be divided. For this reason and many others, taxonomists consider water lilies to be an evolutionary predecessor to modern monocots and dicots: a basal angiosperm group that is neither truly one nor the other.

References

• Biology Reference: Angiosperms
• "Concise Encyclopedia Biology"; Thomas Scott; 1997
• University of Connecticut: Molecular Evolutionary History of Ancient Aquatic Angiosperms
• Pennsylvania State University: Basal Angiosperms