Nelumbo nucifera (lotus)

This is a plant that has enchanted human civilizations for millenia, if not longer. I won't be able to do it all the cultural and anthropological justice in this limited blog post so I won't delve into the cultural aspects, but it is one of those plants that has captured our imagination and beauty in profound ways. It's multisymbolic, and if you've never seen one of these plants flowering in a huge body of water, you are missing out.

A few interesting things that I found in my random studies of this plant: The inside of the flower thermoregulates itself, which is believed to help keep pollinators warm and thus helps with reproduction, the entire plant is edible and can be used in many different ways, the plant is full of antioxidants and has some pretty decent medicinal properties especially as related to anti-obesity, and the way the plant breathes and distributes gas is super complex.

Thermoregulation:

The inner part of the flower stays a consistent temperature compared to the outside temperature. This is a very ancient plant, and grew with a symbiotic relationship with beetles as the main pollinators. The inside staying warm means a beetle can spend some time not freezing their ass off in the lotus flower, and then be on its merry way and help pollinate other flowers.

Edible:

I for one love lotus root, known as 蓮根 in Japanese. I don't recall ever having the seeds (but probably have) or the leaves or any part of the flower. I'm sure I have, I just don't remember. One of the studies I read was solely focused on the effects of cooking on lotus root constituents. Long story short, boiling the root for about 10 minutes is ideal as it draws out many antioxidant properties and makes them more easily digestible by the body. Anything over the 10 minutes just basically makes the properties all fall apart, and less ideal for your body to digest. One very cautionary tale about lotus root consumption is that because the root literally lives surrounded by water its whole life, whatever is in the water is what the root will be absorbing. You are what you eat, and if you're growing lotus root in polluted water, then the root is absorbing that, and when you cook and eat it, you are digesting that. Imagine that, polluted water having consequences. I love plants, because they adapt. The lotus root will use the crap in the water to grow, it will help "clean" the water. But if we're the ones dumping that crap in the first place, and then we eat the root, well then it's like we're eating our own shit, almost literally. It fascinates me how so many people don't consider the water that is used to grow their food, and whether or not it's polluted. I don't think enough people know or care about plants to recognize that if a plant is grown in polluted water, it'll contain those compounds, and if you ingest it, then that's yet another pollutant in your body that your body has to filter out. We're doing this food thing all wrong. Any waste that we create has to go somewhere, and so much of it ends up in our water. Think about that next time to decide to throw something away.

Anti-obesity properties:

So when your body gets ready to make something into fat that will become part of your body, there is this process called adipocyte differentiation. It simply means that stem cells turn into adipocytes, i.e. fat cells, that are then stored in your body as fat. Lotus leaves can disrupt this process so that those stem cells don't become fat cells. The other way the leaves promote anti obesity effects is by breaking down fats so they don't get absorbed by the body. This isn't to say that you can eat shitty food day in and day out, and expect to just eat lotus leaves and stay thin and healthy. It simply means that lotus leaves likely have a beneficial anti-obesity effect, and since diet determines so much of our health, there's likely no harm in adding lotus leaf to your diet that is already good.

Diet note: you should never expect any quick fixes with plants. Plants work in very long term ways, and making your diet more rich in plants is more beneficial than short lived diets in trying to lose weight. Eating a salad once a week, yet crappy food every other day, doesn't mean you can be "healthy." Its not about making plant eating a one time thing. Eating plants should be enjoyable, you should want to eat them, and they should taste good to you. You'll know you're doing well when you can tell what a delicious in season ripe fruit or vegetable should taste like, and you'll know you're doing well when rather than crave super fatty and greasy, or super sweet, you crave a hearty vegetable or fruit, just as it is.

Breathing:

The root spends its whole life submerged in water. A lotus outside of water would quickly die. The study that talked about how the plant moves gas around did so in a very complex way. Basically, the plant has this huge Central Plate Stomata on the big leaf that pops out and floats on the water that works in coordination with the rest of the plant to pass gas through multiple chambers. The reason the root has all those holes is to help the plant breathe. Remember that sun, water, soil, and air (gas) are super important for plants, especially for photosynthesis. So the gas is regulated from the root to the leaf and goes through very complex chambers. To prevent flooding into the chambers, the submerged parts of the gas canals are protected by latex. This plant spends a lot of time in water, so it's no surprise that it has developed anti flooding properties.

Those are some quick notes on the what I learned about the lotus plant.

References:

Ahn, J. H. et al. (2013). Chemical constituents from Nelumbo nucifera leaves and their anti-obesity effects. Bioorganic & Medicinal Chemistry Letters, 23, 3604-3608. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.bmcl.2013.04.013

Huang, B., et al. (2010). Comparative Analysis of Essential Oil Components and Antioxidant Activity of Extracts of Nelumbo nucifera from Various Areas of China. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 58, 441-448. DOI:10.1021/jf902643e

Li, J.K., & Huang, S. Q. (2009). Flower thermoregulation facilitates fertilization in Asian sacred lotus. Annals of Botany, 103, 1159-1163. doi:10.1093/aob/mcp051

Li, S., et al. (2017). Effect of cooking on physicochemical properties and volatile compounds in lotus root (Nelumbo nucifera Gaertn). Food Chemistry, 216, 316-323. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.foodchem.2016.08.044

Matthews, P.G.D., & Seymour, R.S. (2014). Stomata actively regulate internal aeration of the sacred lotus Nelumbo nucifera. Plant, Cell and Environment, 37, 402-413. doi: 10.1111/pce.12163

Nakamura, S, et al. (2013). Alkaloid constituents from flower buds and leaves of sacred lotus (Nelumbo nucifera, Nymphaeaceae) with melanogenesis inhibitory activity in B16 melanoma cells. Bioorganic & Medicinal Chemistry, 21, 779-787. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.bmc.2012.11.038