This lily pad is dying. It will be the slow death that all of its kind endure. The reflections of the trees and bushes that surround its pond seem to be reaching out sympathetically to help ease the way.
The pad has rolled over and is mostly under the water that it has sailed stoutly upon all summer. It soon will lose what little buoyancy it has and slowly sink to recycle itself into the murky bottom of its small world.
This lily pad is one of many that occupied the pond this summer, all now dying as dictated by their individual fate clocks. They are the highly-adapted leaves of our native fragrant water lilies (Nymphea odorata). The flowering lilies are all long-gone; soon, so will these pads. And then, during the winter, we’ll have trouble remembering the ponds’ summer flotillas of vibrant green lily pads and why they are so important.
Among other things, lily pads gather sunlight and perform the photosynthesis of it that is needed to feed the plant. They also provide shade and hiding places to shelter fish and invertebrates and help keep their pond temperatures from reaching a point where unwelcome growth would occur. One of their most visible attributes is providing hunting platforms for frogs and birds, especially red-winged blackbirds:
(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on October 22, 2022 [pad] and June 22, 2018 [bird].)