#nelumbo

Muddy Waters Grow Beautifully

Watercolor on Artboard

2023, 9"x 12"

Lotus Blossoms, Nelumbo nuclfera

Name: Piccolo

Series: Dragon Ball

Gender: Male

Status: Alive

Family: Katas (Father), The Son Family (Honorary Uncle)

Flower Motif: Sacred Lotus (Nelumbo nucifera)

Flower Meaning: Enlightenment

Weapon of Choice: Twelve Bladed Shield (Each blade on the shield’s body resembles a petal, with the center being like the center of a lotus flower)

Associated With: Interdimensional Hero Club

Stationed At Which Cafe: Tokyo, Japan

Hero Form Appearance: An ethereal combination of a lotus inspired outfit, Piccolo’s main costume, and YuYuYu’s Hero Form outfits. The undersuit of the outfit is a neutral gray, which helps make the purple, light green, and pink help stand out. The main outfit itself is a vibrant purple, but as you reach the bottom half of the pants and the ends of the kimono like sleeves, they fade into a lightish green that doesn’t take away from the full outfit. The shoes are green like the lotus stalk, and the cape with shoulder pads is a creamy white, which turns into a soft lotus pink, which then fades to a deeper pink as you reach the lower half of the cape and the ends of the shoulder pads. Oh, and Piccolo’s turban remains the same, but it’s now pink fading to white and with a lotus pattern. The colors that help balance things out are white, gold, dark purple, and magenta. The sacred lotus’s petal shape can be seen in the sleeves, cape, and shoulder pads.

Full Bloom Gauge Location: Below Chest

Guardian: Wampo (Based on the Wampus Cat (Cherokee and Appalachian Mythologies))

Favorite Food: Anything Vegan

Parallel To: None

There are six different plant taxa that are known as lotus, of which only two have mythological connections. The largest genus is Nymphaea, which contains 65 species. They are commonly known as water lilies as they grow in water with their leaves mostly floating on the surface and their flowers mostly blooming above the water, rarely below it. They grow in fresh or brackish water and are pollinated by scarab beetles. They can become invasive when introduced places outside their normal habitat, but there are also several species that are endangered, as well. Their leaves have a notch in them where the leaf joins the stem. They are poisonous, but are sometimes used as a famine food after being cooked thoroughly to destroy the poison.

By BrokenSphere - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3774192

Among the Ancient Egyptians, the lotus' growth from the mud at the bottom of the Nile to bloom at the top of the water symbolized the the sun's rising from the primeval slime. This metaphor of creation also linked the lotus to fertility deities and to the upper Nile, the source of life for the Egyptians. The lotus was also frequently used in their architecture, especially temple columns.

Nelumbo is a distantly related genus of lotus Today, there are only two species in this group, though there are dozens of species going back to the Early Cretaceous. Of the two, the Nelumbo nucifera, also known as the sacred lotus, is native to East, South, and Southeast Asia and likely Australia. The other is Nelumbo lutea, also known as the American Lotus, is native to North America and the Caribbean. Both species have leaves that have a dense layer of waxy papilla, a hairlike structure, that make them ultrahydrophobic, which means water beads up on the surface of the leaf and rolls easily off it. They also are able to generate heat in themselves, likely to regulate their life cycle or to attract pollinators to have them mate on the flower, which improves the likelihood of successful pollination. Their leaves are circular, with the stem joined to the center of it. These lotus can be eaten raw or cooked and used to make 'lotus silk'.

By Manu Praba - https://www.flickr.com/photos/manu_praba_dissanayake/20733087969/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=154598108 and By Natesh Ramasamy from Bangalore, India - Hindu Goddess Lakshmi!!!, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=36663343

Vita (means 'life' in latin)

Nelumbo (ur never gonna guess)

Nelumbo Residence, Cuba,