C. keei 'Jambusan'

Our last target of the day after locating C. ferruginea was C. keei around Jambusan area near to Bau too. This location was quite difficult to locate as we had to travel rather deep pass Jambusan to reach the Kampong (i.e. village) with a river therein where C. keei could be found.


Both submersed and emersed species could be found on the river bed.

The leaves were generally green on both the upper and under sides.

We were lucky to finally find our 2nd species with blooming spathes for this trip (the other was C. striolata which spathe looked very similar to this in my opinion except for the colour).

As usual, we cut the kettle to take photographs of the male and female flowers.

The pH of the water of this river was rather high between 8.0 to 8.5. The river bed consist of mainly sand.

After locating C. keei, we decided to call it a day and drove back to Kuching, passing some limestone hills on the way back.

We had a sumptuous dinner that night (which was our last night for the trip before returning to Singapore the next day) comprising fish fillet fried with black bean sauce, stir fried fern shoot, fried vegetable with egg and fried curry bamboo clams.

As can be seen from the below photograph, we were quite hungry and finished most of the food. The two vegetable dishes were the most delicious in my opinion, remember to try them if you ever go to Sarawak.

C. keei?

This was the 1st location where we found cryptocorynes during our field trip to west Kalimantan. We were expecting to find C. keei or C. cordata var. grabowskii first based on the cryptocoryne distribution map we prepared. Childern were swimming in this river and women were washing clothes right beside this patch of cryptocorynes we found. The river base was sandy and the pH of the water was about 6.5.

The leaves ranged from green to reddish brown in colour.

We found only one opened spathe and this was how the spathe looked. Due to the lack in yellowish colour around the collar, I could not be 100% sure that this was C. keei. We left the identification aside till we got back home so that we could compare it with photographs found on the web sites. My explorer friend thought that it could be compared to C. hudoroi, what do you think?

C. keei?

This was the 2nd location where we found cryptocorynes during our field trip to west Kalimantan. The stream has a sandy base with stones and the pH is about 6.5.

We found a spathe which I felt looked like that of C. keei. However, when we spliced open the kettle, again no female flower was present at all?!?!? My explorer friend referred to it as C. sp. 'West Kalimantan 2' in his blog. I will leave it to you to decide for yourselves what species this is.

C. keei?

During our field trip to west Kalimantan, we found another stream near where we found C. keei lined with carpets of cryptocorynes. Unfortunately, no spathes could be found to verify the species of the cryptocorynes we found. My explorer friend termed it as C. sp. 'West Kalimantan 4' in his blog, '4' refers to the 4th natural habitat we found during the field trip. Is this also C. keei? I will leave it to you to judge for yourselves what species this is.

I was lucky too to catch this couple hot in action, copulating on a bed of cryptocorynes.