Nymphaea alexii S.W.L.Jacobs & Hellq.

Annual or perennial with a globose rhizome c. 2 cm diam. Leaf lamina elliptic, to 15 cm long, to 10 cm wide, slightly sinuate, glabrous on undersurface. Flowers to 30 cm above water, pleasantly-scented. Sepals 4 or 5, to 6 cm long, acute, green outside. Petals (18–) 20–25 (–40), lanceolate, to 5.5 cm long, 1.5 cm wide, acute, white. Stamens to c. 150, cream; filaments ± cylindrical, to 17 mm long; anthers to 10 mm long; appendage white, much reduced and only visible on outer stamens. Carpels 8–16; sterile stigmatic lobes vestigial or obsolete. Fruit globose, c. 4.5 cm diam. Seeds elongated, c. 1–2 mm long, glabrous, with longitudinal ridges, parts of the ridges sometimes proliferating irregularly into linear outgrowths when mature.

Grows in ephemeral billabongs and the shallow margins of more perennial lagoons during the end of the Wet and shortly after, and has often disappeared by May.