Cryptocoryne Blog

Cryptocoryne can be successfully grown several ways:

1) Fully emersed
2) Semi emersed
3) Fully submersed

In this post, I will detail the setup and general requirements of growing Cryptocoryne fully emergent.

Cryptocoryne, like most aroids, thrive in warm humid environments and tolerate low light levels, making them fairly easy to grow in a basic setup.

Setup
A simple, effective and low cost setup consists of:

1) A nursery flat, with no holes (~$1-$2)

2) A tall humidity dome, with vents (~$5-$7)

3) A 4′ twin tube T-8 shop light (~$12-$30)

4) 3″ Hydroponic net pots with CocoTek liners (~$20 for a set of 20)

For under $50, you can have a setup that works quite well. A typical 4′ shop light will actually be sufficient for up to 4 nursery flats, so as your collection grows, you can simply keep adding nursery flats with tall domes and expand your collection. A nursery flat can hold about 18 pots. Since you can fit about 4 of these setups under a single shop light, it gives you the ability to grow your collection to a respectable 76 pots of crypts.

Obviously, you can also use standard aquariums with glass lids to keep the humidity in. 30G or 40G breeder style aquariums work really well. For larger plants, like Lagenandra, you have no option but to keep them in larger setups since they grow quite large.

Potting
Pot up your crypts, add them to the setup and fill the container with 2-4 cm of water. You can also add about 1/4th the recommended dose of MiracleGrow or other fertilizer into the water. The use of a rooting hormone, like K-L-N Liquid Rooting Concentrate by Dyna-Gro also helps get the plant established quickly. If the plant has a lot of leaves but not enough root mass, remove the older leaves so that only 3-4 of the newer leaves remain on the plant.

In the case that you only have a small portion of the plant, don’t plant it too deep. Infact, just having it lay in a small depression and covering the pot up with Saran-Wrap will help the tiny plantlet get established.

Light
Assuming you’re keeping the setup indoors in an insulated room, the shop light will provide enough heat as well. You want to suspend the light about 4-8″ above the dome. Raising or lowering it will affect the amount of light and heat entering the setup.

Temperature
The best way to test the temperature is to measure the temperature of the water the pots are sitting in. It should be at about 75-80F. If the ambient temperature of the room is too low, the light itself might not provide sufficient heat. If that’s the case, a heater can be added to the setup. Nowadays, small indestructible heaters made for small aquariums can be bought for about $10. Having a heater in the setup also aids in getting the humidity levels up quickly.

Humidity
Covering the nursery flat with a humidity dome ensures that any evaporation / transpiration stays within the confines of the setup, raising the humidity levels. Your goal is to have it between 80-90%.

..and that’s it! This is a low maintenance setup. Once a month, change the water and add fertilizer. Plants should start growing within a few weeks of being added to the setup and you should see you first few spathes in about 3 months – for the easy growing crypts anyway.

Ghazanfar Ghori Culture Info

I’ve had this plant flower before, but in the three more recent times its bloomed, I noticed that even though overall the spathe was getting larger as the plant got larger, the tube was actually getting shorter, and it was the kettle that was getting taller. Last week, two spathes opened up at the same time showing the following:

Notice how tall the kettle is.

A cross section of the spathe shows the tube is almost non-existent, a very long spadix and well developed male and female flowers.

Ghazanfar Ghori Spathes

Found only in a limited area in Johore, Malaysia, I was quite happy to receive this plant earlier this year. Though I wouldn’t call the growth vigorous, it is healthy, growing well for me and producing runners. The leaves are green with red markings on them. Last week, this plant threw up a spathe.

You can see a fairly pronounced collar.

The spathe only lasted a few days, and by the 3rd day was already shriveling – I waited too long for the cross section picture, but you see the purple in the throat, giving way to a white tube and kettle that have a little purple speckling.

Note the emarginate top of the stigma’s.

I’m hoping to propagate more of this out and I think it might do well in aquariums.

Ghazanfar Ghori Spathes

One of the many Cryptocoryne cordata in my collection recently flowered for the first time.
Collector information: Cryptocoryne cordata ‘Siamensis’ NJT02-52
I received this plant from a friend, who happens to be one of the reasons I got addicted to growing Cryptocoryne, Sean Murphy. I believe he’d obtained it at some point during his participation at ECS several years ago. The plant grows in typical cordata fashion, nothing special was done to grow it or flower it. With attractive leaves almost 2″ wide and 3″ long, its a beautiful specimen. The spathe is typical cordata, but you’ll notice the limb has a dirty brown coloration to it and is slightly textured.

The male and female parts of the flower are well developed, with a shortened spadix.

Ghazanfar Ghori Spathes

This week, after much anticipation, the spathe on Cryptocoryne sp. JP0501 finally opened up! Unlike any other spathe I’ve seen in person before, the flower is gorgeous, with rich color and texture! Additionally, its quite a large flower, and if you compare it to any of the spathe pictures on Jan’s website, you’ll see that this does not match any known Cryptocoryne species! As I understand from my recent conversations with Niels Jacobsen, this plant is still being investigated and as of right now is thought to be a hybrid between Cryptocoryne minima and Cryptocoryne griffithi. My personal opinion is that the texture resembles nurii more than griffithi. You certainly can see characteristics of both those plants in this spathe. I’ll be sending my pictures of the plant and spathe over to Jan soon, and hope to have some additional information about this unknown Cryptocoryne.

Collector code is: C. sp., JP0501, Sumatra, Riau, Sungei Pelan (Bast 1123).

Onto the pictures!

The spathe a day prior to opening.

It opened up, you can see the limb is long, but its curled down and back making the limb look shorter than it actually is.

Note the texture on the limb. Looks a little like nurii, don’t you think?

The spathe is quite large, almost as wide across as my thumb.

A cross section reveals purple color just inside the throat, but the rest is white.
It opened up, you can see the limb is long, but its curled down and back making the limb look shorter than it actually is.

The female flower is well developed.

Ghazanfar Ghori Spathes