C. sp 'Rompin, Pahang 10'

Rompin swamp was really a gem with many pockets of cryptocorynes specimens waiting to be found. Below are the photographs of yet another location where we found cryptocorynes within this swamp.

Both emersed and submersed specimens could be found but unfortunately, we were not able to find any spathes to confirm their identity.

Some of the submersed specimens had really large heart shape leaves.

Bettas and boraras maculata were common fishes which we always found in such swamp habitat.

If the above fishes were bigger, they might end up as our dinner i.e. clay pot curry fish head.

C. nurii 'Central Pahang'

After eating wanton noodle for breakfast, my explorer friend brought me to the habitat for C. nurii at Central Pahang.

The habitat was a wide river with water level at about shin height. The water flow was rather fast and all the cryptocorynes were fully submersed. The river had sandy bed and the water had neutral pH, i.e. about 7.0 to 7.5.

Below are the close up photographs of the submersed leaves.

We found 2 opened submersed spathes and a few unopened ones as well. One of the spathe's protuberance tips were whitish in colour. Note also the long peduncle (flower stalk).

As usual, we cut open the kettles of a submersed spathe as well as an unopened spathe for review and were rather surprised at what we saw. Look closely at the female flower portion.

The phenomenon was more apparent in the kettle of the unopened spathe.

Did you noticed that there were actually 2 layers (one on top of the other) of female flowers present? What caused such mutation? Was it because of the specimens frequently being submersed under water?

C. sp. 'Rompin, Pahang 9'

Before entering the jungle and forest, always fill up you stomach first as you will definitely need energy to manoeuvre through the forest and that was what we did.

After lunch, my explorer friend brought me through a complex maze of dirt roads and paths to a forested area around Rompin to visit a black water river where he discovered huge batches of cryptocorynes therein.

And once again, we met their good neighbour, the barclaya motleyi again.

I caught some, shrimps, bettas and parosphromenus among the cryptocorynes to take photograph.

Both emersed and submersed specimens could be found.

The substrate was peat soil.

Unfortunately, we could not locate any spathe belonging to these specimens to confirm their identity and had to plan to come back again in the future to search for it again. My friend felt that it could maybe be comparable to C. scurrilis. After taking all the required photographs, we quickly got back into the car to  escape from the sand flies.