A short field trip to Malay Peninsula

I had the great fortune to join my explorer friend on a short field trip to Malay Peninsula. Below are photographs of the habitats of some cryptocorynes seen during the trip.

This Malay combination rice (Nasi kerabu) was really nice, consisting of keropok, rice stained with butterfly pea flower, fried chicken, sambal, fish flakes, salted egg and assorted vegetables. 

Mix all the ingredients throughly, then slowly enjoy...

C. sp. 'Sedili 3' mystery solved!

I revisited C. sp. 'Sedili 3' habitat with my explorer friend and we were happy to finally find an open spathe to confirm its identity.

From the appearance of the spathe, the species should belong to that of the C. cordata family but I am not sure which variety it belonged to. Below are the close up photographs of the spathe for your review. Note that the specimen had raised collar at the throat of the spathe.

The spathe was cut off and brought to the operation theatre for further autopsy.

The kettle was cut open and as usual, a fly "hopped" out in a daze after being unlawfully detained inside the kettle for some time.

So what do you think? Is this C. cordata var. cordata or should this be considered as . cordata var grabowskii?

C. cf. cordata 'Lundu' = C. cordata var. grabowskii???

My explorer friend recently went back to Sarawak and revisited the C. cf. cordata 'Lundu' site. A spathe which he collected managed to bloomed and he featured it on his blog. Below are some photographs which I took when I was there last year, see the rest in this link.

 

My friend thought that the spathe might be comparable to that of C. cordata var. grabowskii, what do you think?

C. cf. cordata 'Dayu' and C. cf. cordata 'Taminglayang'

This was the 3rd location in Dayu where we found cryptocorynes. The 2nd location was a river with a lady washing her clothes and bathing inside so we did not want to bother her and did not explore that location

At this 3rd location, we found some emersed specimens growing on the banks of the river.

Below was the 4th location where we found cryptocorynes. The location was somewhere near to Taminglayang if I did not remember wrongly. Only submersed specimens were found there.

From the reflections on the water, you could probably guessed where this location was located. Yes, under a bridge. Haven't I told you all before that cryptocoryne hunters are lazy people who only search under the bridges along the main road? Hahahaha.

No spathe was located at both locations but from the location where they were found and the current records available on the internet, we guessed that these specimens should be comparable with C. cordata.

C. cf. cordata 'Dayu'

The first cryptocoryne we found around south Kalimantan was near Dayu but we failed to locate any spathe. From 'the crypt pages', it was recorded that only C. cf. cordata was found around this region so we guessed that this should likely be C. cf. cordata too.

The river water level was high and all the cryptocorynes found here were in submersed condition. We were told by our driver that the rainy season was not over yet and encountered a few heavy rain pours during our 3 days 3 nights trip there. Large carpets of cryptocorynes could be found.

The cryptocorynes were growing with some beautiful long stem water plants with greenish leaves with serrated edges.

The leaves of these cryptocorynes are one of the larger ones which I had found so far. The underside of the leaves were very purplish in colour.

The substrate of the river was formed with fine sandy base mixed with pebbles and the pH of the water was rather low at around 4.5?

Oh, and did I ever mentioned before that we frequently found cryptocorynes growing in rivers used by the local for washing clothes, bathing, and disposing of human waste? This was no expeption. Always ask to use the toilet when you can't find the cryptocorynes!