crytocoryne cordata

[feeneyjj]

During the Vietnam war, I was stationed in Bangkok(!), Thailand for 18 months when I was in the Army. (Undeserved luck.) Among the (submersed) crypts I had in my tanks there was one I presume to have been some sort of cordata. It had very long, up to about 18 inches, mainly olive green stems with some red. The leaves were oval, smooth, olive green above and somewhat red veined below. Not at all like blassi, which I had from Helsinki, when I lived in Moscow.

Anyone have any idea what crypt I had in Bangkok?

When I was a kid growing up in NYC, a very popular crypt was something called C. griffithii. Many of the specimens for sale were quite large with stems on the largest specimens nearly as long as the cordatas I had in Thailand. The leaves were much different, dull green, fairly large, somewhere between squarish and heart-shaped. I never had any luck with them in my highly aerated, surely CO2 deficient tanks in those days. (Learned about CO2 from the Germans in the 70's.) Since my NY childhood, I have never seen anything like those C. griffithiis. (I presume that they were not the C. griffithii originally described in the 19th century, which is supposedly very difficult to keep emersed of submersed.) I'd love to get my hands on what they called grffithii back in the day in NY.

[Tim_Koles]

Try checking out The Crypt Pages. Best source that I know of. Other than some of our members which I'm not sure are growing crypts anymore.....

https://crypts.home.xs4all.nl/Cryptocoryne/

[DonkeyFish]

This is a Sean or Ghazanfar question...Sean's just embarked on his two-week FL collecting/vacation trip though. I'll shoot a message to them both.

[DonkeyFish]

GG says: "Cordata most likely. Could be vietnamensis."

Hope that helps!

[feeneyjj]

Thank you DonkeyFish!

[DonkeyFish]

Happy to help! I forgot about another good person to ask, Karen Randall. She’s probably collected whatever it is and has a lovely story to tell about it!