Taking Inventory: Lily Pad

Minecraft’s swamps are dark, dank places, full of mud, clay, and slime. But they’re also one of the most useful biomes – there are a bunch of resources and items that can only be found in swamps. And one of them is our item of the week – the lily pad.

Lily pads were added to Minecraft in version 1.0.0, alongside the enchantment system, nether fortresses, and potions. When implemented, they were 1⁄64 of a block tall. But today they’re a little thicker – 3⁄32 of a block. That’s about a pixel and a half, fact fans.

As noted above, lily pads only generate naturally in swamps. But if you’re in desperate need of one and there’s not a swamp to be seen, then try poking around in a woodland mansion instead – you might find one there. It’s also possible to buy them off wandering traders, and occasionally you’ll fish one up, too. 

Lily pads are most useful as a way of walking on water. They’ll support a player’s weight, making them handy on farms and to make bridges across water. Oh and did you know that lily pads can be placed on ice as well as water? It’s true – and handy, too – a few lily pads on an icy river can interrupt a dangerous slide.

Lily pads can also be handy for starting construction in the middle of the ocean. If you swim underneath one, you can place a block on its underside – it’ll break the pad, but leave the block in place. Useful if you don’t want to swim all the way to the seabed or the shore.

In the real world, lily pads are the leaves of the Nymphaeaceae family of flowering plants – better known as “water lilies”. There are about 70 different species, found all over the world, including Victoria amazonica – the giant water lily, whose pads can be large as three metres across(!). Their flowers are white the first night they’re open and become pink the second night.

The giant water lily was the subject of major rivalry between gardeners of Victorian England. There was stiff competition between the gardeners of the Dukes of Devonshire and Northumberland as to who could be the first to get one to flower. In the end, Joseph Paxton (for the Duke of Devonshire) won the competition in November 1849, by replicating the lily’s natural environment using coal-fired boilers. The lilies’ ribbed underside later inspired Paxton’s designs for the Crystal Palace.

Water lilies are symbolic to many cultures. They’re the national flowers of Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Guyana, and the state flower of Andra Pradesh in India. Lily pads are also seen in Northern European heraldry, most notably on the flag of Friesland and the coat of arms of Denmark. In both cases, they’re coloured red and so look like little hearts instead.

So there you have it – if you want to win a gardener’s heart, get them a lily pad. There’s no finer aquatic flower.