Botanical researchers worldwide add a great amount to the sum of human knowledge – but they also know how to have fun. 

Every August, the annual Waterlily Weigh-Off – organized by Colorado's Denver Botanic Gardens – challenges dozens of public gardens and zoos to see how much weight they can place on a single lily-pad. 

Chasing the title, competitors have laden the leaves with buckets of coins and gym equipment – and like a giant lily pad, the competition is stiffening. 

Missouri Botanical Garden won the 2024 title with a leaf holding 56.2 kilograms – but the 2025 winner, Miami's Bok Tower Gardens, managed 83 kilograms. 

Now, London's famous Kew Gardens has made its entry to the 2026 competition by loading up a single Victoria boliviana waterlily with 102 kilograms – in the shape of Martin Silnevs, one of Kew's botanical horticulturists. 

Stepping carefully onto the leaf in Kew's Princess of Wales Conservatory, Silnevs weighed 102 kilograms when combined with his gear, waders and a plastic base. With that attempt successfully recorded, Silneves was joined by his colleague Aidan Pike – but the leaf had had enough, buckling and sinking. 

The duo also tested another lily-pad by loading it with stacks of tinned baked beans, recording a total weight of 81 kilograms before it gave out. 

'Nature has a way of defying our expectations'

"Stepping onto the waterlily pad felt so surreal and was, indeed, a real leap of faith," said Silnevs. "It’s all very counterintuitive to think a delicate waterlily could support a weight over 100 kilograms – and yet it did.  

"Fun exercises like the Waterlily Weigh-Off just go to prove that nature has a way of defying our expectations and reminding us just how extraordinary the world around us truly is."

Victoria boliviana holds three Guinness World Records – largest species of waterlily, largest waterlily leaf and largest undivided leaf. The largest recorded specimen, at La Rinconada gardens in Bolivia's Santa Cruz de la Sierra, was 3.2 meters wide.  

Victoria waterlilies are incredibly buoyant thanks to the large channels in the veins of the leaf that fill with air to keep it floating on the surface of water and help oxygenate the roots. The leaves are also covered in defensive spikes that help protect them from fish, birds and other potential predators – if not precariously balanced botanists. 

The results of this year’s Waterlily Weigh-Off will be announced on Friday 28 August.