A huge white water lily floats fully open on still water, its many layered petals tinged yellow toward a golden center and mirrored below. Round leaves with upturned rims lie behind it, spiny buds and a prickly seed head sit in the water at left, and a pink, half-opened bud rises at right beside a broad, quilted green leaf. The title below reads Victoria Regia, Expanded flower. Walter Hood Fitch drew this flower and put it on the lithographic stone himself, as the lettering W.

Fitch del. et lith. records, for plate III of Sir William Jackson Hooker's Victoria Regia, published in London by Reeve and Benham in 1851 with four colored plates and printed by Frederic Reeve.

The book's title says the figures were made chiefly from plants flowering at Syon and at Kew. The giant water lily first flowered in England at Chatsworth in November 1849, and the first flower was presented to its namesake, Queen Victoria. Joseph Paxton, who grew it there, drew on his study of the plant for his greenhouse designs, including the Crystal Palace. It is in the New York Public Library in New York.