Victoria regia
J.M. Garg
(As per this link Victoria amazonica was once called Victoria regia after Queen Victoria, but the name was superseded.)
Victoria regia, as it was named, was once the subject of rivalry between Victorian gardeners in England. Always on the look out for a spectacular new species with which to impress their peers, Victorian "Gardeners"[1] such as the Duke of Devonshire, and the Duke of Northumberland started a well-mannered competition to become the first to cultivate and bring to flower this enormous lily. In the end, the two aforementioned Dukes became the first to achieve this, Joseph Paxton (for the Duke of Devonshire) being the first in November 1849 by replicating the lily's warm swampy habitat (not easy in winter in England with only coal-fired boilers for heating), and a "Mr Ivison" the second and more constantly successful (for Northumberland) at Syon House.
The Duke of Devonshire presented Queen Victoria with one of the first of these flowers, and named it in her honour. The lily, with ribbed undersurface and leaves veining "like transverse girders and supports", was Paxton's inspiration for The Crystal Palace, a building four times the size of St. Peter's in Rome.[2]
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