2) They have a thick rhizome that creeps at ground level, with daughter plants growing off the rhizome. L. meeboldi, L. thwaitesii are examples of this growth pattern.

3) Daughter plants grow as a cluster around the mother plant on short rhizome extensions, like L. bogneri.

My Lagenandra thwaitesii plant has gotten rather large, and it’s time to divide it up.

You can clearly see the horizontal rhizome, and off the rhizome, several areas where daughter plants are coming off of.

Using a sharp razor blade, sections of the rhizome were cut to divide the plant into 4 separate sections. You can see, each section has significant root mass to ensure that it will grow just fine by itself after division. its important that you use a clean blade that’s sharp. Irregular cuts have a higher chance of getting infected with bacteria that may induce rot.

Once the cuts have been made, the root mass can be reduced to 2″ lengths to allow for easier planting. It also promoted new root growth which will help the plant get established quickly.

Plants can take several weeks to get established. If the plant has significant sized leaves, you can remove the older ones, leaving only 2-3 of the newest leaves on the plant. This makes the plant easier to keep upright in the pot and reduces transpiration while the roots get established.

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.

1. Before you receive your plant, make sure you know what kind of conditions it needs to grow in. Find out what it’s been growing in, and try to mimic that environment as much as you can. This will minimize stress on the plant, and instead of it using its energy to try to adapt to the new environment, it’ll start growing right away.
2. Once you get your plant, make sure you remove it from the bag as soon as possible. Rinse the plant out in room temperature water and get rid of any rotting leaves and roots. The rhizome is what’s important. Even if all you’re left with is a speck of rhizome, there is a chance the plant will come back. I’ve had several plants that did not do well in shipping, and all I was left with was a peppercorn sized peice of rhizome. In almost all instances, with a little TLC, the small bit put on new growth and eventually recovered.

   

3. Next, soak it for an hour or so in room temperature water that’s got a very dilute mixture of vitamins and hormones. This will help the plant along in a speedy recovery. Personally, I use a very dilute mixture of Super Thrive and K-L-N Liquid Rooting Hormone (a Dyna-Grow product). This gives the plant a little helping hand.
4. Plant it in its pot ASAP. Try to keep the crown just above the water level, especially if you don’t have too many roots to begin with.
5. As the plant starts to put out new growth, the older leaves may die back somewhat. That’s due to the plant tryinng to pull nutrients out from the older leaves, canabalizing itself so that it can put out new roots and leaves. Feeding the plant a Nitrogen rich fert (a dilute mixture, but heavier on the N side) helps. Remove old leaves once they begin to rot.
6. Don’t give up! Sometimes the plants will melt back completely – the pot may appear completely barren, for weeks or even months. Then all of a sudden you’ll be surprised to see a plantlet emerge. I’ve had that happen on numerous occasions! Its very satisfying to see a plant recover from a tiny little nub to a flowering specimen!

   

Cryptocoryne xPurpurea

Considered a natural hybrid between C. griffithii and C. cordata var. cordata, C. xPurpurea is generally a pretty easy to grow cryptocoryne. There are several variations in the leaves and spathes known today, occuring as a result of numerous natural hybridizations.

Submersed grown plants are very beautiful and can grow quite large as compared to immersed grown plants, but do require fairly acidic water and a rich substrate.

In culture, this plant can easily be grown in a medium grit sand with leaf compost or peat added as organic matter. My success with this plant has been using a 50/50 mix of ADA Amazonia and leaf compost. Knowing where this plant originates from, it probably enjoys water on the softer side. Weekly doses of 1/4th strength Miracle Grow encourage robust growth and flowers. Once established, this plant is very prolific, creating runners and daughter plants freely.

Unlike most Sri Lankan cryptocorynes, this plant proves to be a little bit of a challenge in cultivation. Growing in acidic soil with water low in carbonates, the plant creates clusters of daughter plants near the mother.

Side note: I pulled some additional leaves off my mother plant last week and those are now rooted already. This is not a common crypt by any means, and if I can propagate some more out, I’ll be able to share it with my fellow crypt enthusiasts.

Today -5 days

Today

Today -5 days

Today

So it seems, for the initial rooting, putting the leaves in shallow water works well.

This leaf already had a fairly significant plantlet on it. However, look – not much has changed in the 1 week.

The ones in water have been there a couple days LESS than the ones in the soil, take a look here….

New roots are clearly visible and growing! It appears to have a 2nd ‘leaf’ as well.

Both leaves I put in water show similar results and both potted leaves are exactly as they were when I potted them. Comparing these, I’ve taken the rest of the leaves from the pot and added them into the water.

The mother plant…

So the first step was to harvest some of the leaves. With a new razor blade, I cut off one of the older leaves. It was a little tricky to get that leaf cut without damaging the rest of the plant, so I decided the pull off the next leaf. To my surprise, the leaf came off with a tiny plantlet at its base. A little annoyed at myself for not noticing the plantlet earlier, I pulled off another leaf. Woah! What’s that? Another ‘bud’ at the base of this leaf too. I pulled off a total of 5 leaves, and almost all of them have a very noticable little bud a their base.

You’ll notice that in some cases, the bud is fairly well developed. In other cases, its just a little bump at the base of the petiole. The last leaf in the picture (bottom right) is the only one I cut off with a razor. All the rest were pulled off.

click on the picture to get a larger version

I potted up the leaves in 100% Amazonia and drizzled a little rooting hormone around each leaf.

So, the question now is – Does C. elliptica really have the capability to grow a new plant from just the leaf, like African Violets, or is it this little bud the the base of the petiole really the reason behind it all? The leaf in the middle of the pot is the only one that was cut – it doesn’t have a ‘bud’. I’ll bet that little bud is the real reason why elliptica can propagate from a leaf. It also explains why Aaron Talbot’s attempts at this failed – he was cutting the petiole. Take a closer look at pictures available online of others who’ve grown elliptica from leaf cuttings (Google) and you’ll notice that the plantlet always grows from the same ‘bud spot’. In anycase, I’ll post some pictures in a week or two of any success or failure.