Although Apollo had raped Dryope and left her with child, Andreamon took her as his wife. They lived together by a lake surrounded by myrtle groves.
One day Dryope took her son, Amphissos, to the lake edge to offer garlands to the nymphs. There she saw the purple lotus flowering and picked one for her son.
But the flower stem bled, and she dropped it in alarm. The plant has once been the nymph Lotis, fleeing the obscenities of Priapus.
Dryope, horrified by what she had done, tried to flee, but now, rooted to the ground, found herself unable to move. Her sister, who had witnessed the whole episode, ran to fetch her husband and her father.
With her last words Dryope cried out against the injustice of what was happening to her. "I am being punished without having committed any crime," she said. She charged her family to bring the child up well and allow him to play under her branches. "let him beware of pools," she said, "and not pick flowers from trees, but believe that all fruitful shrubs are the bodies of the goddesses." When her lips stopped speaking, they ceased to be, but long after her body was transformed, the new-made branches kept their warmth.
This story was taken from MYTHS OF THE SACRED TREE: JOURNEY THROUGH THE LORE & LEGEND OF TREESby Moyra Caldecott