The Lotus in the Lake
My wife and I were on our way to dinner to celebrate our twelfth wedding anniversary Friday night, when we took a little detour to Echo Park.
We were motivated partly by nostalgia. Weekend picnics in grassy parks were frequent in our courtship days and Echo Park – an urban oasis with palm trees and a small lake near downtown Los Angeles -- was one of our favorites.
Our main motive for the detour, however, was to see how far the lotus bed at the northwestern tip of the lake had gotten with its annual bloom.
Much about the Echo Park lotus bed, including its genesis, is obscure. In an excellent piece on a Web site maintained by the Echo Park Historical Society, writer Jenny Burman finds references in the Los Angeles Times to donations of lotus plants to Los Angeles parks as early as the late 1880, but no specific reference to the Echo Park lotus stand itself until 1928. There are, moreover, no surviving accounts of how the lotuses in Echo Park came to be, not in the Times or any other known sourcce.
Also unclear is the truth of the frequently encountered claim that the Echo Park Lake lotus bed is the “largest outside of Asia.” The “Sacred Lotus” (or, as it’s known to science, Nelumbo nucifera) is native to South Asia, but seems to have been successfully imported to a number of places in the United States. Burman suggests that there may be lotus beds in Hawaii, the two Carolinas or Florida larger than the one in Echo Park
Interestingly, the US Department of Agriculture, in its plant database on the Web, maps Nelumbo nucifera as present in seven states, but not California.
Beyond dispute, however, is the extraordinary beauty of the plant. Firmly rooted in the muddy bottoms of lakes or ponds, the plant’s tall stems rise through water (as high as 20 feet, reportedly) to support the large round leaves and the delicate flowers as they float on the surface.
We arrived at the park Friday at dusk. The sun was low enough that the park and the lake were in shadow, but the downtown skyline to the southeast looked like a wall of reflected flame. The lake itself was quiet and still. The traffic had died down and only a handful of people were still out jogging or walking their dogs. Even the ducks on the eastern shore seemed too placid and lethargic to break the quiet as the sunlight began to fade.
The lotus stand had reappeared, just as it has every year.
It seemed just a little different from years past to both of us. There’s a gap, a narrow empty channel in the middle of the stand, which neither of us could recall seeing before. Otherwise, the large round leaves are as profuse as ever. They are now waist-high. Soon they will be shoulder-high – a floating forest.
In a matter of days – in time for the city’s annual Lotus Festival (July 9-10) – the blooms will be open and in full pink-and-white glory. Friday, however, in the fading light of the dusk, they were closed and pointing prayerfully heavenward.
The lotus flower evidently has symbolic importance in both Hinduism and Buddhism. One Web site I visited offered a complex explanation:
I mentioned this to my wife, who had a Buddhist childhood in Thailand, and asked for her comment. She combines sincere faith with a down-to-earth view of things. “Maybe,” she shrugged, “but lotus flowers simply are very beautiful and that’s reason enough to use them [in Buddhist art and ceremony].”
Then she flashed the dazzling smile that won me over so many years ago.
We were motivated partly by nostalgia. Weekend picnics in grassy parks were frequent in our courtship days and Echo Park – an urban oasis with palm trees and a small lake near downtown Los Angeles -- was one of our favorites.
Our main motive for the detour, however, was to see how far the lotus bed at the northwestern tip of the lake had gotten with its annual bloom.
Much about the Echo Park lotus bed, including its genesis, is obscure. In an excellent piece on a Web site maintained by the Echo Park Historical Society, writer Jenny Burman finds references in the Los Angeles Times to donations of lotus plants to Los Angeles parks as early as the late 1880, but no specific reference to the Echo Park lotus stand itself until 1928. There are, moreover, no surviving accounts of how the lotuses in Echo Park came to be, not in the Times or any other known sourcce.
Also unclear is the truth of the frequently encountered claim that the Echo Park Lake lotus bed is the “largest outside of Asia.” The “Sacred Lotus” (or, as it’s known to science, Nelumbo nucifera) is native to South Asia, but seems to have been successfully imported to a number of places in the United States. Burman suggests that there may be lotus beds in Hawaii, the two Carolinas or Florida larger than the one in Echo Park
Interestingly, the US Department of Agriculture, in its plant database on the Web, maps Nelumbo nucifera as present in seven states, but not California.
Beyond dispute, however, is the extraordinary beauty of the plant. Firmly rooted in the muddy bottoms of lakes or ponds, the plant’s tall stems rise through water (as high as 20 feet, reportedly) to support the large round leaves and the delicate flowers as they float on the surface.
We arrived at the park Friday at dusk. The sun was low enough that the park and the lake were in shadow, but the downtown skyline to the southeast looked like a wall of reflected flame. The lake itself was quiet and still. The traffic had died down and only a handful of people were still out jogging or walking their dogs. Even the ducks on the eastern shore seemed too placid and lethargic to break the quiet as the sunlight began to fade.
The lotus stand had reappeared, just as it has every year.
It seemed just a little different from years past to both of us. There’s a gap, a narrow empty channel in the middle of the stand, which neither of us could recall seeing before. Otherwise, the large round leaves are as profuse as ever. They are now waist-high. Soon they will be shoulder-high – a floating forest.
In a matter of days – in time for the city’s annual Lotus Festival (July 9-10) – the blooms will be open and in full pink-and-white glory. Friday, however, in the fading light of the dusk, they were closed and pointing prayerfully heavenward.
The lotus flower evidently has symbolic importance in both Hinduism and Buddhism. One Web site I visited offered a complex explanation:
"The Lotus is a very important symbol in India and of Buddhism. It refers to the complete purification of body, speech and mind, and the blossoming of wholesome deeds in liberation. The lotus refers to many aspects of the path, as it grows from the mud (samsara), up through clean water (purification), and arising from the deep produces a beautiful flower (enlightenment)."
I mentioned this to my wife, who had a Buddhist childhood in Thailand, and asked for her comment. She combines sincere faith with a down-to-earth view of things. “Maybe,” she shrugged, “but lotus flowers simply are very beautiful and that’s reason enough to use them [in Buddhist art and ceremony].”
Then she flashed the dazzling smile that won me over so many years ago.
posted by Tim McGarry at 6:02 PM
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