Santa Cruz (Bolivia), February 21. In an idyllic ecological park created by Bolivian landscaper Gastón “Tonchi” Ribero in eastern Bolivia, giant water lilies have been cultivated for just over two decades without initially knowing they were a different species. of those that had been recorded up to that moment and which have just given the country three world records.
The Bolivian Victoria is the name of this plant, native to the Llanos de Moxos, in the Amazon region of Beni, and which, before being classified as a new species, also had samples that grew for decades in the Bolivian National Herbarium and almost two centuries. in the collection of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, UK.
With a diameter of 3.2 meters and an area of 7.55 square meters, the Bolivian Victoria that achieved two world records grew in 2012 in the eco-park La Rinconada, seven kilometers from the city of Santa Cruz .
“The leaf has won two titles, it has been recognized as the largest lily pad in the world and the largest undivided leaf in the world. So two records for La Rinconada, for Bolivia, for the world and that’s definitely it , a Bolivian Victory that we want everyone to feel like that,” Ilani Ribero, daughter of “Tonchi” Ribero, told EFE.
These two are specifically for La Rinconada, and Bolivia as a country held the record for the largest aquatic plant in the world.
GOOD LUCK IN SANTA CRUZ
An impressive artificial lagoon covered with giant water lilies and also inhabited by koi fish welcomes visitors to La Rinconada.
The intense green and red tones of the edges of the leaves, fused with the blue of the sky reflected in the lagoon and the occasional orange of the koi that come to the surface to feed, form part of a landscape worthy of the paintings of the French Claude Monet .
The ecopark was created in 1999 on the initiative of Ribero, who fell in love with these plants during a trip to Beni 40 years ago and wished to have in Santa Cruz “a space where he could admire them up close and where more people can have here,” Ilani explained.
The first thing was to build the artificial lagoon for Las Victorias and the next thing was to move it from Beni, where this plant “is everywhere”, he said.
They took “26 plants to Santa Cruz, all well covered, moist, keeping mud where they root”, however, only one survived and, according to Ribero told his children, it was “the smallest and the one they had the least confidence in” the one that allowed the reproduction of the giant water lilies in La Rinconada.
According to Ilani, the leaves grow each year at the end of October measuring two to three centimeters in diameter and between December and February they reach their “giant” size.
THE PLANT
The Bolivian Victoria belongs to the genus Victoria, of the Nymphacaceae family, and was discovered and described by the German scientist Taddeo Haenke while sailing on the Mamoré River, in Beni, in 1801, according to information from the small museum La Rinconada .
In 1829, she received the name of Victoria Regia, in honor of the English Queen Victoria, admirer of the water lily, refers to the same source.
The Bolivian variant remained anonymous until photographs caught the attention in 2006 of Spanish horticulturist Carlos Magdalena, a Kew Gardens worker, who led a team that confirmed it was a new species.
Its name, Bolivian Victoria, honors Bolivians and the home where the water lily grows in South America, the aquatic ecosystems of the Llanos de Moxos.
A reassessment of the giant water lily family was published in July 2022 in the journal Frontiers in Plant Science, the Guinness World Records organization announced in a publication devoted to the Bolivian leaf.
The leaves of the other two known members of the Victoria group, the Amazonia and the Cruziana, are estimated to reach 2.3 and 2.4 meters respectively, “a far cry from their exclusively Bolivian relative”, adds this source.
ROAD TO VICTORY
Last October, the Riberos learned that the leaf, which in 2012 had reached a diameter of 3.2 meters, had won two Guinness World Records accolades.
But the journey to get there goes back much earlier, since in 2005 the pruning of his water lilies began to catch Ribero’s attention.
That year there was one that measured 2.87 meters in diameter and seven years later the record sheet sprouted, Ilani recalls.
A notary, witnesses and photographs have attested to this, with the intention of naming it for Guinness, and a fiberglass sculpture of the plant has also been made, which is on display in the eco-park museum .
Ribero attempted to set the record with the Guinness organization the same year, but it was cut short because at the time of the physical verification there were “terrible winds in Santa Cruz” which knocked over and completely damaged the leaves, Ilani remembers.
It was after discovering that they were a new species that Guinness World Records approached the Riberos to set the record.
Gina Baldivieso