Physical Adaptations of Giant Water Lilies and Humanity
Today at Hong Kong Garden, I saw giant water lilies (Victoria amazonica) for the very first time, juxtaposed with one or two of their smaller cousins. I was struck by the contrast in physical design between the different species. Water lilies all have a flat shape designed to maximize exposure to sunlight for photosynthesis. The giant water lily, however, has a distinct upturned edge that varies in height between 2–6 inches, as seen below:
Giant water lilies have many remarkable physical features besides the outer wall. They are extremely buoyant due to their ridged undersides that form a network of air pockets that help keep giant water lilies afloat and make them surprisingly strong: a fully grown giant water lily can easily support the weight of a small child. They also grow extremely quickly once they open up from the bud, expanding as much as half a square yard every day until they reach their maximum dimensions of six feet in diameter.
But why does the giant water lily have an outer wall when other lily species do not? At first I thought the wall assisted with stability, to keep water from flowing into the outer periphery and perhaps flooding the water lily, sinking it. The rib structure, however, provides a firm enough framework to solve that problem.
The answer, in fact, lies in the giant water lily’s particular strategy for maximizing its exposure to sunlight: aggressive expansion. Once Victoria amazonica begins its rapid growth, the wall actually serves to push other plants and flowers out of the water lily’s territory. During growing season, giant water lilies can quickly take over a body of water, using their walls like the shields of a Roman legion, shoving aside all other plants and depriving them of sunlight. Other water lilies are meeker and more willing to share space with other plants, sometimes overlapping each other with their more forgiving structures.
The contrast between the giant water lily and other species of water lily is fascinating. Both follow the imperative of biological self-replication and dynamic kinetic stability, but each species adopts a different strategy for doing so. Seeing this difference today, a series of old questions came to mind. Which species could be called the most successful one? What are the criteria for success in biological self-replication? Sheer numbers, certainly, but persistence is also a key consideration. Life and inanimate matter both search for stability, but play very different games: inanimate matter trends towards the lowest energy state, whereas life is always in tension with this direction, seeking to circumvent the thermodynamic trend towards entropy. The giant water lily takes a different approach to this game than its more mild-mannered cousins, but both of them are successful in having conned entropy and persisted across many millennia.
And what about homo sapiens? In many respects, we can call ourselves the most successful species, far more successful than even the powerful giant water lily in terms of sheer numbers, technological mastery (here representing our ability to manipulate and control our environment) and land area inhabited. But from a different perspective, our numbers and technological mastery have culminated in the distinctly disadvantageous creation of a unique capability among the animal and plant kingdoms: the capacity for self-destruction. Ever since the development of nuclear weapons, humanity must worry about the possibility of self-annihilation through all-out nuclear war.
Even without such destructive weapons, our industrial development and technological dominance has put a tremendous drain on the Earth’s natural resources, and we are slowly but surely entering into dangerous waters by altering the delicate balance of the global climate. We may call ourselves the dominant species on this planet, but what other species has to worry about the possibility of self-destruction and ending its own self-replicating pattern? And as we develop new capabilities— artificial intelligence, gene editing, and nanotechnology among them, perhaps — we must become ever more on guard against ending our own race, or irrevocably altering it.
When reflecting on the future of our own species, we should keep in mind that different strategies should be judged on the basis of long-term viability and not just short-term success. Today was a reminder for me that life is always playing the long game, not just a numbers game. The giant water lily does not have the same dominance we possess, true. Unlike us, however, it has the distinct advantage of lacking any capability of bringing itself to a premature end.
Elon Musk has adapted to our new circumstances and is playing the long con by trying to colonize Mars and create a backup plan for humanity in case the worst should happen, maximizing our long-term possibility for survival. At the same time, nation-states such as North Korea, the United States, Japan, and China continue to butt up against other countries like giant water lilies. I fear that while this strategy has worked splendidly for Victoria amazonica over the centuries, it may have lost its viability for homo sapiens as a viable long term strategy.