Lily Pad

The lily pad is a short, flat block found growing on water in swamplands.

Obtaining
Lily pads can be instantly mined with anything.

Natural generation
Lily pads can be found naturally on water in swampland biomes, underground lakes and inside woodland mansions.

Fishing
Lily pads can be obtained as a "treasure" item while fishing.

Usage
Lily pads can be used to make paths over water without having to build bridges or use full blocks. Lily pads are broken and drop as an item when water flows on it. Mobs cannot spawn on lily pads.

Normal blocks can be placed on the bottom side of lily pads (from below). This breaks the lily pad (dropping it as entity) but leaves the block in place. Since lily pads can be placed anywhere on water, this is useful for starting construction mid-ocean without need to start from the bottom or shore, for example when starting construction of ocean monument draining system.

Placement
Lily pads can only be placed on top of water, ice or frosted ice. Lily pads occupy the block above water and are not part of the water block itself.

Lily pads face a consistent direction which depends on their location and is not affected by the direction the player is facing. Replacing a lily pad will not change the direction.

Unlike most blocks entities can collide with, lily pads can be placed directly inside players. This is considered a bug on the Java Edition but is a completely intentional feature on the Bedrock Edition.

Trivia

 * When lily pads are placed on water source blocks that do not take up the space of the entire block (when the water is flowing to the block next to it), the lily pad will appear floating above the water source block.
 * In the Console Edition, if a swamp is next to a taiga at the edge of the world, lily pads in the swamp may spread to the taiga ocean, which could be frozen, causing it to generate on ice.
 * If you sprint on lily pads, they will appear to give off water particles. This is because the game thinks you are technically on the water below the lily pad.