Is This Normal?

Over-crowded lilies made the leaves shoot up and, cutting some of them off to see the flowers, we noticed that the entire root system is floating on the water surface.

Do the roots not normally anchor themselves to the bottom of the pond?

 

Hello you No they don't! The rhizome should be planted in a large, wide, shallow container with biggish, rounded stones on top of the soil and the whole lot lowered to the bottom of the pond (gradually, if there are no leaves already sprouting). The stones stop it floating up again and also stop fish and amphibians from displacing the soil. Even then, after a few years the rhizomes crawl out of the container and start to congest more and more towards the surface, at which point the leaves push out of the water.
Can you get in there? Lidl do a lovely range of bright pink wader/combi suits No shoes, a pair of Marigolds and a sharp kitchen knife are all that's required. Re-plant a bit of rhizome as suggested above and compost or sell the surplus.

 

Actually, now I look at the photo, it should be easy enough to do from ground level. What a shame, you'd have looked good in the waders

 

Mine has rooted in the sludge in the bottom of the pond, after escaping its container about 20 yrs ago.
If there is no soil in the bottom of the pond it has to rely on a pot that you have given it, if it contains fairly clayey soil it should be heavy enough to hold it until it outgrows the container at which point it will look to anchor itself on any bottom gunk.

 

Mine start planted but quickly outgrow the containers. The rhizomes definitely float. Huge gert rafts of them. I was tackling them just last week. Forgot the Marigolds, so if anyone has some hot tips for cleaning badly-stained hands and nails, I'm all ears

 

Oh yeah they float if not anchored, definitely.
How about tying lead weights to them, and a couple of inches, or more, of good old mud on the bottom.

 

@LawnAndOrder Wonder how deep your pond is, suspect its quiet shallow and so hard to anchor such a big plant down ?

Possibly take some pieces of it and pot them up to make properly submerged plants or if just leave it as it is , if your are happy with it like that ? the plant looks healthy enough and flowering away.

 

Really good to hear from you. How nice that you should be the first to respond, as it was the photo of your wonderfully neat pond (which I can no longer find!) that prompted me to reexamine my water lilies and take the bull by the horns; it had really gone out of hand and we could no longer see any flowers at all (below); I will divide the rhizomes and weigh them down as you suggest. I liked the idea of the pink waders, but Mrs LAO says she prefers me au naturel (and that's also pink).

Thank you also to Pete and Ricky.

Yes, will do that as well.

Many thanks to all.

 

I've always tied my lilies to a brick with rope and just dropped them in, where the roots find the bottom themselves. They can become very buoyant when in full growth with a large rhizome, so it's worth dividing them every few years.

 

Can only assume that you've all got a foot of sludge at the bottom of your ponds It's strange, though, that my lilies definitely have a propensity to grow upwards and/or float. I'm wondering if tying a big concrete block to OH's waist and chucking them both in would improve things?

 

With my lilies, if the rope comes lose, they will float up to the surface. For a big lily you need quite a weight to keep it under the water.

 

You need to cut off a lot of the leaves, its the leaf stems that make them more buoyant.