Monday, March 21, 2011

C. sp. 'Pahang 8', should it be C. cf. xpurpurea 'Rompin' or C. cf. zukalii or what else?

I managed to visit the habitat of what I earlier termed as C. cf. xpurpurea to see the opened spathe in its natural habitat in Rompin. My friend who saw it earlier felt that it could be comparable to C. zukalii instead. attached below are the photographs which I took for your reference for you to decide yourself what it should be.
an unopened spathe
the golden orange coloured limb of the opened spathe, note the acute angle of the limb and the throat
the spathe being cut off to further expose the interior of the kettle
the slightly yellow coloured throat attracting a fly to rest, , the throat areas were not fully closed up for all the 3 opened spathes I saw so far
the interior of the kettle
The spectrum of variation in cryptocorynes found in the nature is sometimes really too great in my opinion to be able to accurately identify which species should a cryptocoryne be declared as. Maybe I should revert to terming it as just C. sp. 'Pahang 8' so as not to cause future confusion due to inaccurate indentification!
Another lesson learnt from this habitat : if one is too oblivious to what is happening in the surrounding, one might be easily crushed by the little fingers of others (mine in this case :-p, the mosquito would not fly away once they started sucking blood even as my little fingers closed in to kill them).

1 comment:

Hermes said...

Beyond my expertise what species it is, but what great photographs. This is such a useful record.