Nuphar lutea(L.) Sm.

yellow water-lily

WFO wfo-0000382140 Accepted WFO 2026-06 7 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–g

Nuphar lutea, photographed by Jason Grant
fig. a Jason Grant, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-11 / obs. 205230084
Nuphar lutea, photographed by Petr Harant
fig. b Petr Harant, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203292405
Nuphar lutea, photographed by Andreas Stiller
fig. c Andreas Stiller, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205449434
Nuphar lutea, photographed by Soulette
fig. d Soulette, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204068618
Nuphar lutea, photographed by Stephan Mende
fig. e Stephan Mende, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205609774
Nuphar lutea, photographed by Yann Kemper
fig. f Yann Kemper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 203939563
Nuphar lutea, photographed by David Delon
fig. g David Delon, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203228477

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Confused withby our own model

These are not lookalikes we guessed at. Each one is a species our identification model genuinely mistook for this plant, and how many times. The error rate is published.

Flowering n = 1,468 observations

Peak flowering in Jun, from 1,468 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 38 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Nenuphar luteum Link
  • Nuphar affinis Harz
  • Nuphar fluviatile Laest.
  • Nuphar grandiflora Laest.
  • Nuphar grandifolia Laest.
  • Nuphar graveolens Laest.
  • Nuphar latifolia Laest.
  • Nuphar latifolia subsp. boreale Laest.
  • Nuphar lobata Laest.
  • Nuphar lutea var. rivularis (Dumort.) De Wild. & T.Durand
  • Nuphar lutea var. submersa Rouy & Foucaud
  • Nuphar rivularis Dumort.
  • Nuphar sericea Láng
  • Nuphar spathulifera Rchb.
  • Nuphar systyla Wallr.
  • Nuphar tenella Rchb.
  • Nymphaea affinis (Harz) Hayek
  • Nymphaea lutea L.
  • Nymphaea lutea f. punctata J.Schust.
  • Nymphaea lutea f. purpureosignata J.Schust.
  • Nymphaea lutea f. schlierensis J.Schust.
  • Nymphaea lutea f. sericea J.Schust.
  • Nymphaea lutea f. submersa J.Schust.
  • Nymphaea lutea f. tenella (Rchb.) J.Schust.

and 14 more.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice, no toxicity claim and no native range, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.