Lutea Lotus seeds. Plant outside from May 15th until June 5th, file edge of seed and place in water. Follow our planting and care instructions from the Growing a Lotus from Seed page.
Lutea is the native American Yellow Lotus. It is usually large and just like tubers, will not move well in the same summer from one pot to another. It is important to plant them in the container they will grow in throughout the summer.
Lutea are found all over North America from parts of central America and up into parts of Canada so they should not have a problem overwintering in your pond if planted in early to mid-May, as we suggest.
This plant, in particular, does not seem to uniformly form great tubers in the south. It usually forms more runners. Lutea is actually easier for us to sell from seed than many hybrid varieties. We flip many pots each spring to find mostly runners. At the Alabama location, that is not a killer like it would be above ground a little farther north. Lutea are not as easy for us to supply by tuber, so we suggest Yellow BirdLotus. Yellow bird is very similar to Lutea , its' petals are more rounded and slightly more yellow, and we are able to offer it by tuber.
From our travels we have seen that various lakes and ponds of natural lutea have very different characteristics across the United states, some are smaller, some more yellow, some quite tall. This is common of species where a selection may be cut off from pollinating with other lutea nearby for many generations (often hundreds or thousands of generations) with another group of the species. If we come across a great tuber forming ecotype of lutea we will most certainly begin tubering that form.