Yet another day in the farm experimenting with cultivation methodologies

I spent an afternoon at my friend's mini-farm yesterday, experimenting with different cultivation methodologies.

My friend had moved away from using small cultivation tanks for a long time. Currently, his plants are laid in plastic baskets with water spraying down and splashing at them 15 minutes every hour using a pump connected to mechanical timer. This will ensure that the plants are sufficiently wet, or at least keep the humidity level high around these concrete ponds.

Before letting your imagination run wild thinking that all the plants shown in the above photographs are cryptocorynes, I better inform you that they are not. Most  of them are actually bucephalandra. Let your imagination run wild now if you are a bucephalandra fanatic! The below photograph shows one of the very rare mutated monster bucephalandra under his collection.

As you can see from the below photograph, my friend is trying out using used active charcoal filter media (free of charge, left over from adjacent fish farms) as substrate instead of soil-based substrate for some of his cryptocorynes collection.

The below photograph shows another trial using rock wool as substrate, again instead of soil-based substrate.

Some specimens of C. striolata collected from west Kalimantan by my friend are currently being cultivated just by placing them on a layer of rock wool. We spotted a beautiful budding spathe with yellow tip.

The leaves of these C. striolata specimens are quite beautiful too.

There were some fibre tanks which are filled with higher levels of water. Some cryptocorynes cultivation trials are being conducted here too.

My friend was kind enough to let me have a small space in one of such tanks to play around with my own cryptocorynes. I selected a few pots of cryptocorynes from my home's cultivated tanks to be relocated here instead, hoping that the change in environment (i.e. water condition, water level, temperature, humidity, etc) will spur these pots of cryptocorynes to exhibit better growth as compared to their current lacklustre performance.

I also lined a basket with filter sponge and filled the space with "aquarium soil" to see whether the increased permeability (i.e. allowing for more water to flow through the substrate as compared to those in pots with only a few holes at the bottom) will improve the plant growth or not.

Hopefully all these changes above will prove to be beneficial to the plants. My friend is also lucky to have beautiful show dogs from the neighbouring farm to help him to guard his mini plant farm free of charge.

appearance of cultivated C. cf. striolata 'Gunung Besar'

The new leaves of C. cf. striolata 'Gunung Besar' cultivated in my tank are light green in colour.

These are the germinated seeds, slightly less than 1 month old.

Attached below is a photograph of a pot of C. striolata from Sungai Assan Sarawak for your ease of comparison.

inside the kettle of C. cf. striolata 'Gunung Besar'

The below is a photograph of the inside of the kettle of C. cf. striolata 'Gunung Besar, South Kalimantan'.

To compared to that of C. striolata 'Sungai Assan, Sarawak', see below.

C. cf. striolata 'Gunung Besar, South Kalimantan'

In the morning of our last day in south Kalimantan, we located another stream on Gunung Besar with cryptocorynes growing submersed therein.

The cryptocorynes seemed to be similar to the ones we found in another larger river on Gunung Besar. We found a specimen with an attached spathe.

The unopened spathe seemed similar to that of C. striolata, with a long twirling tail at the top of the limb.

The stream bed was sandy and the cool water had high pH of 7.5 to 8.0.

The leaves had a mix of brown and green colour on the upperside and were purple in colour on the underside.

Some of the leaves only had a small green dot at the base while the rest of the leaves were brown in colour.

Long rizhomes were present to help these cryptocoryne be firmly attached to the base of the fast flowing stream.

The spathe opened on the way back to the airport, it opened too widely such that the slit extended well below the throat level.

I managed to record a video of the cryptocorynes under the fast flowing water.

C. cf. striolata 'Gunung Besar, South Kalimantan'

On day 2, we went up Gunung Besar ("Gunung" = "mountain", "Besar" = "big"). At around altitude 200m plus (according to our cheap GPS which I felt the altitude readings could sometimes be rather unstable and inaccurate), we found a fast flowing river (it rained heavily the night before for the whole night). My explorer friend thought he saw some black patches along the river bed at the other side of the bank so we walked to the river side to explore.

My friend was wrong, the black patch was some flat rocks submersed under water. Instead, I saw a small patch of submersed plants growing at our side of the river bank.

I reached in and plucked a leaf out to see what type of plant they were. Cryptocorynes! Yeah!!!!! We were luckily for if my friend had not mistaken some submersed rocks as patches of plants, we would not had walk to the side of such a large and fast flowing rocky river and found this small patch of cryptocorynes.

The river bed was sandy and the pH of the water was rather high, about 7.5to 8.0. And because of the high altitude, the water temperature was rather low.

As it was rather late already, we hurriedly collected some specimens and moved on. Upon reaching our hotel that night, I examined the collected specimens and found one with a blooming flower which looked like an orchid (haha just joking).

An unopened spathe was found. I thought it looked that belonging to C. striolata / keei / hudoroi / etc. type of cryptocorynes with long slender twisted tail at the tip of the limb. In accordance to the information recorded on 'the crypt pages', I would termed them as C. cf. striolata here.

The specimens had deep rizhomes to attached themselves firmly onto the sandy bed of the fast flowing river.

One characteristic of these specimens was the reddish "chicken feet" veins found on the leaves base. The bullate leaves were cordate in shape and were greenish to brownish in colour (the mix of colour being highly variable). The underside of the leaves was typically reddish in colour.

Would low temperature be a important factor to sucessuful cultivation of such specimens found at such high altitude?