A botanical genius, Latour-Marliac, who lived at Temple-sur-Lot in the south of France, did for hardy water-lilies what Technicolor did for motion pictures: he gave them color. Marliac, the son of one world-renowned botanist and descended, on his mother's side, from another, began hybridizing with a few species of hardies in the latter part of the last century.

No one knows just what species he used or how they and their varieties were crossed. However, excellent culture, combined with careful selection, soon began to produce startling results. From the late 1880's until the turn of the century, Marliac amazed the horticultural world with a seemingly endless presentation of superb new varieties. Although many of them lacked fragrance, practically all were robust and free flowering under a wide range of conditions. Best of all, they presented a gamut of hues vivid and varied enough to satisfy the most color-hungry water-lily fancier.

It is a safe presumption that this hybridizer obtained many of his initial results by crossing the European species with the prolific American Nymphaea odorata and N. tuberosa, or at least varieties of them.