Water Lily Plant : How To Plant A Waterlily Aquatic Plants Pond Plants Aquascape : Nelumbo is a genus of aquatic plants with large, showy flowers.members are commonly called lotus, though lotus is a name also applied to various other plants and plant groups, including the unrelated genus lotus.members outwardly resemble those in the family nymphaeaceae (water lilies), but nelumbo is actually very distant to nymphaeaceae.