C. sp. 'Pahang 2'

I went to Peninsula Malaysia with my explorer friend last month and explored a forest beside a black water river to search for cryptocorynes. The entire forest bed was flooded with flowing black water.

We walked around but could only find barclaya submersed in the water.

I don't know how, but my explorer friend who always had a good sense of hunting, amazingly was able to spot a small patch of submersed cryptocorynes among the beds of baclaya!

The forest bed was laid with fine sand and the pH of the water was about 5.

This was how the leaves of the cryptocoryne specimens which we found looked like, brownish green bullated cordate leaves with pinkish underside and undulating leaf margins.

We found a few spathes which had not opened yet. A characteristic we noticed was that the tube of the spathes were all slightly twisted.

An unripe fruit was found too and it is now growing in my cultivation tank.

We cut open one of the spathe which looked as if it was going to melt and discovered that the colour of the limb seemed pinkish and the limb's surface seemed to be mottled.

The stigma of the spathe seemed quite long. It was a pity that the few spathes we collected did not managed to pull through (i.e. they melted in our tanks before they could open up).

I am not yet able to fully relate these cryptocoryne specimens we discovered to any of the current known species found in Peninsula Malaysia. My friend thought they could be compared to C. scurrilis, what do you think? C. cordata? C. griffithii? C. scurrilis?

As for me, I will term them as C. sp. 'Pahang 2' in the meantime until we are able to find and photograph their opened spathes for further comfirmation of their identity. My friend went back to the forest again recently and found out that the water level had dropped substantially, he should be able to locate the opened spathes soon! Do visit his blog to see more updated photographs from his recent visit.