Viral TikTok Challenge Discovers Water Lily That Weighs Over 140 Pounds

You may ask, what do water lilies and competition have in common?

It all started at the Denver Botanic Gardens. The botanical garden recorded a TikTok video showing how much weight their Victoria ‘Longwood Hybrid’ Waterlily can lift and challenged several other botanical gardens on TikTok to show off the strength of their own Victoria waterlilies.

According to Erin Bird, assistant director of communications at the Denver Botanic Garden, the winner of the challenge will receive a trophy and the title of “Heavyweight Water Lily Champion.”

According to the Denver Botanic Garden, the Victoria ‘Longwood Hybrid’ tree in Denver weighed 65 pounds and had a diameter of 38 inches.

The garden got the idea in 2021 to see how much weight its Victoria water lilies could bear. This year, Bird said, the Victoria ‘Longwood Hybrid’ held up 85 pounds.

She said Denver hadn’t tested the strength of its water lilies until last year, when they came up with the idea of ​​a “soft launch” of a garden-to-garden contest. They posted a video of themselves weighing the water lilies on TikTok, and it went viral.

She said that after speaking with the New York Botanical Garden last year, they decided to make the contest a reality this year. The challenge began in mid-August, and participants had until Aug. 30 to submit their contest entries.

Denver Botanic Gardens received 17 entries in the contest, including two from the U.K.: Kew Gardens in London and the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh in Edinburgh, Scotland. Sixteen of the entrants were from botanical gardens, but they even received one entry from Toldeo Zoo, Bird said.

“It’s a fun competition,” Bird said. She also said it’s an entry point to get people excited and interested in nature and botanical gardens, and the videos are going viral on social media.

Each garden had to weigh one of their Victoria water lilies to enter the competition. Species accepted for the competition included Victoria ‘Longwood Hybrid’, Victoria cruziana and Victoria amazonica. ‘Longwood Hybrid’ is a cross between the genes of Victoria cruziana and Victoria amazonica.

As Bird explained, the Victoria water lily species is native to the tropics, so in some climates, such as Denver, the plants are grown from cuttings each year and have a shorter growing season.

In Denver, lilies are typically planted in pools only in June, after the last possible frost in May, and the lilies are placed in outdoor pools that do not have heating units, Bird said.

However, out of the 17 participants, only one winner could be selected, whose name was announced on Tuesday in Denver.

The winner was Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis, whose Victoria ‘Longwood Hybrid’ Waterlily weighed 142.5 pounds and was 5 feet across. The lilies edged out Naples Botanical Garden in Naples, Fla., which came in second with its Victoria Waterlily, which weighed 135 pounds and was 4.25 feet across.

“It was cool to watch videos of everyone else who entered the Victorias,” said Derek Lyle, senior nursery manager at Missouri Botanical Garden. “The competition was even tougher this year, so it was even more exciting.”

Lyle said the Missouri Botanical Garden was invited to participate in the challenge in 2023, but couldn’t because of the contest’s deadline. So they were prepared this year when they received an invitation from the Denver Botanic Gardens to compete this year.

“I remember everyone asking me if I thought we could win, and I said, ‘I think we have a good chance!’” Lyle said.

He added that because they had been growing lilies for some time, they knew what to expect from the plants.

“We’ve never officially seen or tested how much they can hold,” Lyle said. “So we were going into this blindly.”

Lyle said the Missouri Botanical Garden team considered using St. Louis-themed objects to calculate how much weight their water lilies could hold, but instead opted for sandbags and weights to get a more accurate weight estimate and distribute the weight more evenly across the water lily’s surface.

“We wanted to achieve the maximum because the show was very fruitful,” he said.

Lyle said that in 2019, when the St. Louis Blues hockey team won the Stanley Cup, the garden placed the Cup on one of the Victoria Waterlilies. The Stanley Cup weighs 34.5 pounds, according to the Hockey Hall of Fame website. “We knew for sure it could hold about 40 because it didn’t budge at all with the Stanley Cup on it,” Lyle said.

Other contestants also used sandbags and weights to represent water lilies, but some also used decks of cards and soft drink cans.

Lyle said the Victoria Waterlily, which the Missouri Botanical Garden selected for the contest, was carefully selected because other waterlilies that might have been larger had holes or deteriorated over time.

“We have to remove the decaying pads twice a week,” he said. “Just to keep the pool looking nice and clean.”

Lyle said Greta and Claire, two of the gardeners featured in the Missouri Botanical Garden TikTok video, chose the rootstock that was the most durable and structurally sound.

The Missouri Botanical Garden’s collection of water lilies dates back to the 1800s, and there are even photos of people standing on Victoria Waterlilies from 1890. Lyle said the genetics of the garden’s current collection date back to the mid-1990s.

Like the Denver Botanic Gardens, the Missouri Botanical Garden also produces its Victoria Waterlilies from seed every year. He said they start the seeds in the greenhouse in late January, then transfer them to the pool in late April or early May.

Lyle said Missouri’s warm, humid climate and heated pool help the water lilies grow so strong and large. “We’re very fortunate to have a warmer climate, so we can start growing them sooner than Denver.”

He added that in 2018, the Missouri Botanical Garden built a heated pool that will extend the water lily growth season.

Like Denver, water lilies face some challenges growing in St. Louis. Lyle said rain slows and sometimes stops water lily growth because they believe the climate is changing.

“Sometimes when storms come in, they can drop 2 to 3 inches of rain in a couple of hours,” Lyle said. “That rain will actually slow them down because that rainwater is cooler than the water in the pool.”

From there, they can either start growing again or go dormant, he said. Once the Victoria Waterlilies’ growing season is over, Lyle said the plants are physically removed from the pools, usually the first week of October.

He added that Victoria water lilies have to be removed from the pools one at a time and because they are covered in thorns, removing them is more difficult.

The weight of the water lily petals is also a factor. “They’re very heavy,” Lyle said. “Each petal can weigh up to 40 to 50 pounds by the end of the season,” he said. The water lily measurements vary from year to year, but average 6.5 feet, Lyle said.

The largest recorded area at the Missouri Botanical Garden was established in 2019 and was 93 inches, or 7.75 feet, Lyle said.

When it comes to Missouri Botanical Garden’s participation in the 2025 Waterlily Weigh-Off Challenge, Lyle said the garden needs to defend its title.

“Everybody’s coming to us. So we know we’re really going to have to try harder and be a little more creative or a little more exploratory,” he said. “We’ve got a target on our backs!”

As for the closest competitors, Lyle said he was most concerned about Naples Botanical Garden, which came in second because of the length of Florida’s growing season. “I knew they were going to be close to us, or at least the winners.”

But in the end, the Missouri Botanical Garden won the challenge. “I was happy that we were able to beat Naples in a very nice and professional, fun way,” Lyle said.

Lyle said that when he learned that the Missouri Botanical Garden had won, he shared it with Greta and Claire, the two gardeners in their film. “They were over the moon. They were so excited to be, first of all, entered and then to win!” he said of their reactions.

He added that the Waterlily Heavyweight Champion trophy will likely remain somewhere in the horticultural section, but its final location in the garden has not yet been determined.

To see the full list of the final water lily weights for each of the 17 participants, Click here.

Source of original article: Viral TikTok Challenge Discovers Water Lily That Weighs Over 140 Pounds