C. ferruginea 'Balai Ringin'

Due to keeping to our tight schedule for the earlier 2 days 3 nights to cover the areas where we originally planned to go, we were left with 1 day to explore some new areas in Sarawak. We decided to try Pawadan area after breakfast, which again consisted of prata (with egg as filling this thing round) and kopi 'O' kosong ice.

We spent close to half a day around Padawan area carrying out quick searches in the streams and forests along the main road but could not located any cryptocorynes. There were no "easy-to-find" cryptocorynes around Padawan area. I took some photographs of the wild ginger plants with flowers in the forests as well as and some inhabitants (barb?, crab, half beak, loach?) of the various streams we searched.

By the time we exit Padawan at around Serian, it was after 2pm already and we had a choice to either 1) end our search and slowing make our way back to the hotel to pack up and then to the airport to catch our flight at 6.45pm or 2) try one more area but would have to rush like mad to catch our flight later. Which option do you guessed we chose?

To end the jinx of not being able to locate any cryptocorynes during the last day of our trip, we decided to sped towards the direction to Sri Aman. Around Kampong Kerait area, we stopped by a large river and debated whether to search around this area which was known to have C. ferruginea (do a search on the Internet and you should be able to find some information on this) or drive on further to Balai Ringin area instead. We decided to drive on and soon reached the forested area around Balai Ringin.

We bashed into the forest and found that the forest was quite dry. After searching for a while, we could not locate the C. ferruginea we were looking for and were about to give up and rush back to Kuching when my explorer friend finally spotted a few stalks of cryptocoryne growing out from the leaf litters. We searched further and found that the forest actually had many patches of cryptocorynes growing in dry condition (i.e. with no water nearby) among the leaf litters on the forest bed.

I found a depression in the ground with a little bit of stagnant water left and collected a small quantity back home (I had no time to test the pH there). The pH of the water was about 4. I always had the impression that C. ferruginea were found in areas with higher pH (i.e. near limestone areas) but this location proved otherwise. Perhaps during rainy season when the water level would be higher with water flooding and flowing through the forest, the pH level would be higher than that of such stagnant pool of water?

The forest bed consisted of dried mud.

The C. ferruginea found here were much smaller than those found in Bau area. We could not find any spathes and did not had the time to search for them anyway.

We just took a few photographs and hurried out of the forest to rush back to Kuching. It was close to 4pm already. We stopped by a roadside stall selling goreng pisang (goreng = fried, pisang = banana) and bought 5 slices of banana fritters, 3 slices of yam fritters and 3 slices of sweet potatoes fritters for a total of $2 ringgit only. Very cheap and delicious!

These were the scratches accumulated during this trip from bashing in the forests, which is another thing you would need to endure if you want to go for such trips.

We never expected Kuching to have such bad traffic jams. By the time we reached the airport after going back to the hotel to pack our belongings, it was 6pm already. If we had arrived 5 minutes later, the check-in counter would had closed and we would be left stranded in Kuching for another night. I only ate my dinner after I reached back to Singapore in a coffee shop beside my house.

By the time I finished washing my clothes, waist pouch, net, boots, etc it was about 11pm already. I still had to wash and pot the cryptocorynes I collected before I could get some rest to prepare for work tomorrow.

This marked the end of my 2nd field trip to Sarawak.

C. ferruginea 'Bau'

It was already after noon by the time we decided to shift our focus from Lundu area to Bau area. We stopped by a roadside coffee shop and had 2 cups of ice milk tea each to quench our thirst before making our way to Bau. Below are some photographs of wild boars which were roaming around the coffee shop.

After searching for about 1/2 hour, we finally found the C. ferruginea right below a limestone hill at Bau in Sarawak. We passed by that area for a couple of times during our last trip but did not imagined that any cryptocoryne would be found there. Actually if I had done my homework more thoroughly, I would have found photographs of that area in websites of other cryptocoryne hunters which had visited there before.

You probably could see the limestone at the background in the photograph below. The cryptocorynes were growing along the edges of a pool of water under the limestone hill.

Both submersed and emersed specimens could be found there.

The leaves of the Cryptocoryne ferruginea there were quite wide and were green in colour both on the upper and under sides. The leaves also had dark green markings.

The pH of the water there was about 6.8 to 7.o, not as high as I thought for a pool of water directly under the limestone hill. The cryptocorynes were growing on soft muddy banks.

Below are photographs of some of the inhabitants of the water pool.

C. ideii or C. ferruginea 'West Kalimantan'???

On the 3rd day of our trip, we reached somewhere where we thought was around the C. ideii "SKx" position shown in the crypt pages. We passed by a forest along the road, which floor level fell as we bashed deeper in until we reached a river inside the forest. There, we spotted clumps of cryptocorynes growing along the muddy banks. The pH of the river water was about 5.5.

"We found it, this must be C. ideii!", I thought when I saw the clumps of cryptocorynes from far. The leaf shape looked rather like that of C. ideii and we were expecting to locate C. ideii around this location.

On closer examination, the leaves had distinct white lines marking along the main vein of the leaves and some markings of different shade of green on the upper side of the leaves. The edges of the leaves are just slightly undulating.

We scrambled to search for a open spathe to confirm the identification and we found 2, one was freshly opened while the other was melting soon. I started to raise doubts when I saw the spathes. "I don't remembered C. ideii having a limb with such thin pointed upper tail, this looked more like a spathe of C. ferruginea which we failed to locate in day 2!", I told my friend.

However, when we cut open the kettle, we realised that the interior wall did not had the deep purple red colour. Instead, it was white in colour like that of C. ideii.

I am confused by the presence of limb with thin pointed tail and yet white interior wall of the kettle! The female flowers looked more like that of C. ideii too as compared to that of C. ferruginea. Should this be C. ideii or C. ferruginea or what? My friend is more inclined towards identifying this as C. ideii. Any expert views and advise on this? Thanks!