Lily Pad

The Lily Pad is a block found growing on water in swamp biomes. Lily pads are walkable, but apart from this, little else is known about them.

Breaking the lily pad will place it in the Player's inventory. It can be replaced on any water source block. It may be placed on top of a flowing spring block.

Lily pads are not craftable. Cutting the block with shears will not do anything.

Lily Pads' primary use is for making paths over water without having to build bridges or use full blocks. This is very helpful for crossing oceans or rivers, and especially helpful for making farms, as you can now put the water needed to obtain wet farmland in the center of the farm, and still be able to easily access your crops without wading through water.

Lilly Pads are also very helpful in that they make it much easier to create floating platforms, or waterborne bases in the ocean, as the player can place a lilly pad on the water, then other blocks on the lilly pad, rather than having to swim to the nearest landmass to create bridges.

History
Lily Pads were introduced in the Beta 1.9 pre-release. In Beta 1.9 Pre-releases 1-5, lily pads could only be placed on swamp water, and could not be walked on. But as of Beta 1.9 Pre-release 6, lily pads are now solid. This means that all entities can interact with the lily pad block: arrows stick to it, mobs can walk on it, and boats can collide with it. But as of Beta 1.9 Pre-release 6, entities such as the Player cannot swim through lily pads to the surface. In some lighting conditions lily pads are less visible than other blocks when viewed from underwater.

Trivia

 * Placing a block on top of the lily pad will cause the block to appear to be floating. This is due to the fact that the lily pad consumes a whole block.
 * Lily pads are destroyed when the water beneath it freezes.
 * Lily pads are destroyed when water flows on it. This can be used to climb by alternating the placement of lily pads and water source blocks without leaving the placed lily pads.
 * Even when swimming under water, lily pads can be destroyed with one hit.
 * When lily pads are placed on water source blocks that do no take up the space of the entire block (when the water is flowing to the block next to it), the lily pad will apear floating above the water source block.
 * When placing a lily pad under another lily pad beneath the water, it destroys both lily pads and the water source blocks adjacent to the one the lily pad was placed on flow towards it; a lily pad can no longer be placed on this block, but can be placed on the adjacent water blocks flowing towards it.