The Nymphaeales, taken in the narrower sense, appear to have diverged from the other flowers very early on, representing a basal clade offshoot to the flowering plants.
The Nymphaeales may be briefly characterized as those families of the Magnoliidae that are aquatic herbs without ethereal oil cells and without vessels in the shoot.
Most of the Nymphaeales have long-petiolate leaves with broad, cordate to hastate or peltate, floating blades, but in Ceratophyllum the leaves are all slender and submersed, and in Nelumbo many of the leaves are emergent.
It is here considered that the modern Nymphaeales all descend from a group of primitive dicotyledons that took to an aquatic habitat and became herbaceous very early in the history of the angiosperms.
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