A8 - Nuphar Lutea Community

Summary

Synonymy

Floating-leaf association Pallis 1911 p.p.; Nuphar lutea-Lemna vegetation Tansley 1911; Myriophyllo-Nupharetum Koch 1926 p.p.; Nymphaeetum albo-luteae Novinski 1927 p.p.; Sagittaria-Nuphar vegetation Butcher 1933 p.p.; Potameto-Nupharetum Müller & Gors 1960; Nuphar lutea society Spence 1964.

Constant species

Nuphar lutea.

Rare species

Nuphar pumila, N. x spennerana, Nymphoides peltata.

Physiognomy

Like Nymphaea alba, Nuphar lutea has been widely planted as an ornamental aquatic throughout lowland Britain, and it figures as a sparse occasional in a variety of vegetation types of open waters, but the Nuphar community includes all those stands in which its submerged and floating foliage, put up annually in the spring, makes up a substantial proportion of the cover. Much of the vegetation is species-poor, consisting of little else apart from N. lutea, and even where its associates are more numerous and consistent it is hard to know whether the assemblages are wholly natural because of the frequent introduction of the plant. Some stands, mostly in southern Britain, also have N. alba: indeed, almost all vegetation with both the species is closer to the Nuphar community than the Nymphaeetum. Most records for our other native yellow water-lily, the rare Continental Northern Nuphar pumila, a plant largely confined to Scotland with us, seem to be with the Nuphar community too. And a very few sites have the hybrid N. x spennerana, which persists in some places in the apparent absence of N. pumila (Heslop-Harrison 1955c). Another rarity, Nymphoides peltata, is to be found, again probably sometimes planted, in stands in southern England (Perring & Walters 1962, Perring 1968): with its yellow flowers, it can be taken for N. lutea at a distance, though these are bunched in fascicles in Nymphoides and the petals are fringed.

Few other species occur with any consistency throughout the community, but Elodea canadensis (rarely, it seems, E. nuttallii) can be very common and abundant beneath the canopy of floating leaves and, in the different kinds of Nuphar stand, a range of other aquatics enriches the various elements of the vegetation. Quite often, for example, there are fragments of a duckweed mat occurring among the lily pads, with Lemna minor being particularly frequent, and other floating-leaved plants, notably Polygonum amphibium and, rather less commonly, Potamogeton natans, sometimes contribute to the surface cover.