Victoria Regia
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Victoria Regia. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
genus of a Euryalidæ, akin to Euryale, from which it differs by the sepals being deciduous, by the petals gradually passing into stamens, and by the cells of the ovary being more numerous. Species, one or three. The type is Victoria regia, named by Lindley after Queen Victoria. It is the most magnificent of all known water lilies, and is the more acceptable that it came from a region in which it had been supposed that no Nymphæaceæ occurred. It was first discovered by the botanist Hænke in 1801; Bonpland afterward met with it. Orbigny, in 1828, sent home specimens to Paris; others also subsequently saw it growing, but it excited no attention till, in 1837, Sir Robert Schomburgk found it in the Berbice river in British Guiana. The rootstock is thick and fleshy, the leaf-stalks prickly, the leaf peltate, its margin circular, its diameter from 6 to 12 feet, the edge so turned up as to make the leaves floating in tranquil water look like a number of large trays. The leaves are green above, and covered with small bosses, below they are deep purple or violet; the undeveloped flowers are pyriform, the sepals four, each about seven inches long by four broad, purple externally, whitish internally; the petals numerous, in several rows, passing insensibly into stamens, fragrant, the outer ones white, the VICTORIA REGIA inner ones roseate; stamens numerous, the outer fertile, the inner sterile; ovary many celled, cup-shaped above, with many small stigmas along its upper margin; fruit a prickly berry. A native of South American rivers, especially the tributaries of the Amazon. The seeds are said to be eatable, and the plant is in consequence called water maize by the natives of the region where it grows.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
. See Water Lily
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The name Collier's used in 1921 is no longer the accepted one: because Poeppig had described the plant as Euryale amazonica in 1832, five years before Lindley's tribute to the Queen, priority rules make the correct name Victoria amazonica, though "Victoria regia" survives in garden usage. Collier's hedged on whether there were "one or three" species; botanists long settled on two, V. amazonica and the more southerly V. cruziana, until a third, Victoria boliviana, was formally described from Kew's living collection in 2022 after decades misfiled as V. amazonica. Its leaves, which can exceed three metres, hold the record for the largest in the genus. The descriptive detail in the 1921 entry, from the prickly leaf-stalks to the edible seeds that earned it the name water maize, remains accurate.
Written for this edition, 2026.