heard back from Donald Padgett. Extremely helpful. This is what he had to say below, which means I will have to visit this population after winter and sort it out. Kent This positively is not N. microphylla. At first glance, it looks like N. xrubrodisca (but identifying plants from photos is very tough). Did you find fruits? Normal looking? N. xrubrodisca usually doesn’t set fruit and if it does, they are very abnormally shaped/aborted with few, if any, seeds. The most common species is N. variegata, which is generally larger than N. xrubrodisca. This doesn’t normally have a red disk, but having red or purple features is not unusual. A petiole would help as N. variegata normally has lateral wings along its length. I wrote a paper comparing all three species that might help you (Padgett, D.J., D.H. Les and G.E. Crow. 1998. Evidence for the hybrid origin of Nuphar × rubrodisca (Nymphaeaceae). Amer. J. Bot. 85: 1468-1476). A pdf file is on my webpage.
Many spring ephemeral wildflowers like Bloodroot rely on myrmecochory — seed dispersal by ants. The seeds of spring ephemerals bear fatty external appendages called eliaosomes (white worm like material attached to these seeds). Ants harvest and carry them back to their nests and eat them. The unharmed seeds are thrown into the trash bin and eventually germinate. A single ant colony may collect as many as a thousand seeds over a season. Unlike seeds dispersed by birds or wind, on average, a seed is only carried about two meters from the parent plant. With such short distance dispersal, forest fragmentation is a threat to the survival of spring ephemerals. Once these plants are gone from the forest, it is rare that they return.
