C. sp. Belitung 5 'West Belitung'

The 3rd day in Belitung was quite a leisure day as we only visited 1 other cryptocoryne habitat, which was the one which we passed by during our 1st night. As usual, breakfast was the same Javanese style coffee and jam toast, simple but delicious.

Along the way we caught a few bettas, of which one of them could be a new sub-species / species under the foerschi group.

The cryptocoryne which we found were fully submersed in water. The base of the river was sandy with pH of about 6.0. Again, I am not able to confirm the species as no flowers were found.

It started to rain heavily again during noon time. I took a photograph of a lone boat rocking in the choppy sea beside the restaurant where we had lunch.

After lunch, we went back to the hotel to bathe and then to the small airport on Belitung to catch the flight back to Jakarta to connect back to Singapore. By the time we reached home, it was past midnight already.

This wrapped up our adventure in Belitung. 5 cryptocoryne habitats were located but sadly, no flowers were found at the various habitats to allow us to confirm the species. Lets hope the few specimens which I collected back would survive and flower.

the rest of day 2 on Belitung, visiting the flooded C. fusca habitat

We spend the rest of our day travelling to the eastern end of Belitung island to look for more cryptocorynes habitats, including that of C. fusca. Along the way, we passed by many different types of rivers and streams, ranging for large flooded open rivers to smaller but still flooded forest streams. I took some photographs of the various inhabitants wherever I had the chance to do so.

Red line rasboras were one of the many beautiful fish that could be found on Belitung. I caught the same type of rasbora on Bintan Island too. If you magnify the photograph, you would be able to observe that the red line is actually formed by many small red dots.

These horizontal tree trunks were my saviors when bashing through flooding swamps with palms. They provided me with supports to prevent myself from stepping and sinking into the soft muddy ground (haha, as stated before, I do not like to get my feet wet!)

This was a land sea cucumber I found at outside the restaurant which we had lunch. Lunch was plain but delicious nasi goreng (i.e. fried rice).

The below plant is very common on Belitung and could be seen everywhere around the island.

Sadly, there were some streams with mining activities being carried out.

Soon, we reached the location which were tipped to have "black leaves" C. fusca. We could find none except a fast flowing stream inside a forest. After asking the villagers living nearby, we confirmed that the cryptocorynes could be found only at the base of the stream. The stream water level had rose by more than a man's height according to one of the villager.

We stepped into the water slowing feeling our way under water with our fishing net. At one point, the stream base started to drop almost vertically and we decided to stop advancing. Suddenly, my explorer friend started to swing his fishing net in a fashion as if he was trying to scoop something out of the water. As he stopped swinging, he told me that he saw a snake within the vegetation growing out of the water.

We then saw that a snake was still stuck inside his net. After a few more violent swings, the snake finally was flung out of the net and we saw the snake sliding away on the water surface. We decided that it was not worth the danger entering into this fast flowing deep stream with snakes around just to collect C. fusca.

We passed by an open swamp land along the way near evening time, the rain had not ended since it started int he morning...

We had some fried goreng pisang (fried bananas) for tea.

The day finally ended with some star grass collection.

I had nasi ayam panggang kecap (rice with barbecued chicken in sweet soy sauce) for dinner in a restaurant opposite to our hotel.

C. sp. 'Belitung 4' North Belitung

We travelled for the next 1 hours plus searching various streams which we passed by. I took some time to scoop some inhabitants to take photographs.

Finally we found a forested area with a flooded forest stream running through it. In this stream we found the cryptocorynes growing submersed, and we suspected that during dry season, the entire bed of the forest stream could possibly dry up and be covered with carpets of emersed cryptocorynes.

The cryptocorynes found here were of rather uniform size and appearance. The leaves were all rather small, with dark green upper sides (covered with faint reddish dots) and slightly reddish under sides.

The stream bed was muddy and the pH of the water was about 5.0.

Again, we could not locate any flowers to determine the species and therefore, I shall record them as C. sp. 'Belitung 4' first until hopefully, I am able to flower the small amount of specimens I collected. Could it be the common C. bangkaensis or something else?

C. sp. 'Belitung 3' South Belitung

Early in the morning before the sky turned bright on our second day in Belitung, the hotel staff delivered our breakfast to our rooms. Breakfast was simple but delicious butter toast with jam infill and Javanese coffee.

As mentioned earlier, we visited Belitung at the wrong time period. It started raining the moment we commenced with our hunt on day 2. We decided to head south on day 2 and found our 3rd cryptocorynes habitat in Belitung soon.

The cryptocorynes were growing fully submersed in the stream. The leaves were rather large, almost 1/2 a palm size. The underside of the leaves were reddish in colour and the leaves were slightly bullate.

We tested the pH of the water, it was about 5.0. What species could these specimens be? C. bankaensis? C. xpurpurea? C. cordata? Any advise?