Re-visitng C. nurii 'Mersing'

I had the good fortune to visit the natural habitat of C. nurii 'Mersing' again last weekend with my explorer friend. Unlike the last time when we reached there only in the evening, we arrived in the early morning this time round and travelled deeper along the river.

We were greeted by carpets of cryptocorynes. The uneven levels of river bed gave rise to intermittent sections of emersed and submersed cryptocorynes.

We were able to locate many riped fruits, of which some still had seeds attached.

From the photograph, you can tell that the base of the river is sandy and mixed with stones (laterites?). The pH was between 5.5 to 6 according to what I measured previously, no measurement was done this time.

I like the spathes of this variation of C. nurii very much, with the heart shape limb perpendicular to the tube, very romantic!

Another feature which is distinct to this variation of C. nurii is the red dots lined along the veins of the leaves.

The new emersed leaves are reddish brown in colour (in terms of entire leaf colour) as opposed to the older leaves which looked brownish green.

I thought the red dots are confined to appear along the leaf veins only but I was wrong. There were some leaves which we termed as "with crazy markings!"

As usual, we removed a specimen with a fully opened spathe to cut the flower to examine the interior of the kettle.