Friday, August 28, 2009

C. bullosa 'Pakan'

We passed by a river around Pakan area in Sarawak and saw an island in the middle of the river. From far away, the island looked like it was covered with pebbles.

Luckily, we decided to go nearer to confirm and was pleasantly surprised when we discovered cryptocorynes growing camouflage among the pebbles. There were both emersed and submersed forms present.

The river bed was sandy and the pH of the water was about 6.5.

Below are some close up shots of the leaves and roots.

From above you could tell that the cryptocorynes were quite deeply rooted, i.e. the white portions of the petioles were all buried within the substrate. We managed to locate a spathe with just the limb portion sticking out of the river bed and therefore had to dig out the specimen in order to photograph the entire spathe. After some discussion, we concluded that it should be C. bullosa. It was the 1st time I found C. bullosa.

We also found a "delicious" looking fruit.

As usual, we cut open the spathe to expose the male and female flower.

2 comments:

will said...

I saw some photo that bullosa is in very red color, may i know in what condition the leaf would turn into red? Thanks

illumbomb said...

Hi Will, sorry I am not too sure regarding the conditions when cryptocorynes leaves would turn red. In fact, I had in many occasions found cryptocoryne specimens with both green and red leaves growing together within one single plant. I read on the Internet relating the red colour to "anthocyanin", you might want to google it to find out more about it.