# flowers in the winter!



## Aaron (Feb 12, 2004)

...one of a few advantages of living in Hawaii, I guess. The weather is always good enough to grow fish and plants outdoors all year round.










Here is a picture on my usteriana in bloom. There seems to be thoughts out there that this plants "needs" to be submersed to be happy. I have simply not found this to be the case. Cs got this plant for me about 2 years ago and it has produced dozens of runners and has been flowering for me once a month for a little over a year now.










here is my nurii in bloom! It has been in my possession for about 3 years I think. I can't say it is thriving, as it has not grown much since it acclimitized to emersed conditions. It seems to only replace leaves that get old and die...
As you might expect, I was quite surprised to see this one flower.


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## ts168 (Apr 13, 2004)

Hi Aaron, Very nice plant there.

Keep it up.


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## hsteve (Jul 9, 2005)

Outdoor, eh?
I'm living in Colorado right now, so nuttin' blooms in da winter, mon...


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## HeyPK (Jan 23, 2004)

Nice pictures, Aaron. Short days, 11 hours of light or less, seem to stimulate blooming. Even in Colorado, you can get crypts to bloom in the winter by keeping them on windowsills where they do not get artificial light, just light from outside.


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## Daphnis (Jul 19, 2005)

Hi Aaron!

Outdoor would be funny here in Germany, there are now temperatures in the night about -20°C to -30°C (-4°F to -22°F). It would produce nice frozen flowers.

But yours are flowering very fine, I hope my will do one day, too. Today I started a new emersed setup, my old fishtank was too small, the new can contain 3 times more plants.

CU,

Sascha.


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## Xema (Mar 24, 2004)

Hey!!!! awesome flowers!!!!

Only keeping C. nurii alive is a very impresive record!!!.

C. nurii is a forced sumerged growth plant, so its leaves in emersed culture always look in bad condition. I think, it only bloom during the low level of water season. 
About C. usteriana, in my case, it´s growing very nice under soft and acid condition, same situation for aponogetifolio too... Both growing rather well.
Your pictures are an inspiration for me

Daphnis, glad to read you... In Spain having not so bad T. But I am living in the south only 6ºC over 0 inde night... Enought cold for me... and keeping 16ºC into my outdoor set up with a 5w aquarium heater.


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## Aaron (Feb 12, 2004)

Xema,
funny you talk of inspiration... it is your postings here that refreshed my interest in crypts. 
Have you considered growing usteriana, apono., and coronata in more alkaline conditions? It has been my experience that these three will take off when I use a "harder" substrate. I add a pinch of crushed dolomite in their pots and also use Seachem's Onyx sand as the majority of the substrate.


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## Xema (Mar 24, 2004)

Actually, They are growing in more or less neutral soils but the water that it flows throught them is pH 5,5 and eC 300 - 400 mS. For these plant I use to add some grain of coral sand in the surface of the pot. C. aponogetifolia never grew like now... I was growing it in pure silica sand them I moved to the indoor set up with above condition they started to grow with very big leaves... same case with coronota.


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## Xema (Mar 24, 2004)

What kind of soil are you using in nurii culture?

Mine are growing with little leaves in a high porous soil with acid reaction, expanded clay, aqualit, akadama, and a part of granulated peat... and some dried moss.










I allways thought nurii was a bad emersed grower and they would allway got little leaves in emersed culture... But recently I found some pictures from a Japanese grower which give me hopeness in a beutifull and with large leaves nurii.


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## Aaron (Feb 12, 2004)

Xema, that Japanese pic of nurii is unbelievable! Holy smokes, talk about shoving some humble pie down my throat! 

My nurii is growing in a mixture of #3 lapis Lustre blasting sand, peat, topsoil from my back yard, and lychee leaf mold (my substitute for beech leaves...) It is topped with a number of local mosses. My other nurii are growing in ADA aquasoil/ powersand, and another mixture similar to the first but with Seachem Flourite instead of the blasting sand, respectively. Neither look as healthy as the one that flowered. This is something I did not expect and I dare not speculate why that is. 


On another note, my usteriana has been flowering regularly fo quite some time and I have noticed a number of seed pods at the base of a couple of the mature plants. Anyone know how to collect them? Do I just clip them and break them open? Would be an interesting project to pursue...


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## Kai Witte (Jan 30, 2006)

Aaron said:


> On another note, my usteriana has been flowering regularly fo quite some time and I have noticed a number of seed pods at the base of a couple of the mature plants. Anyone know how to collect them? Do I just clip them and break them open?


Hello Aaron, Congrats! Just let nature take its course - they will open when the seeds are ripe. BTW, that can take a long time! A good sign of ripening for most/many species is a notable elongation of the stalk. Breaking them open will often fail to give viable seed though.


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## Aaron (Feb 12, 2004)

thanks Kai, 
Some of them must be several months old. How is seed propogation with crypts? Difficult?
There really is no need to do it this way, since usteriana produces so many runners, but it would be an interesting experiment...


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## Kai Witte (Jan 30, 2006)

Crypt seeds are pretty large. Thus, growing seeds is fairly easy (if the respective species is doing well for you, that is).

There are species which don't propagate easily by runners, so practising with seeds from species where this isn't a consideration still seems like a good idea to me.

The second reason to invest efforts in raising seedlings is that most of the available crypts are only known from one or few clones while seedlings (even from self-fertilizing) allow you to observe some of the natural variation which one tends to overlook when limited to clones widespread in the hobby.


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## Aaron (Feb 12, 2004)

Kai Witte said:


> The second reason to invest efforts in raising seedlings is that most of the available crypts are only known from one or few clones while seedlings (even from self-fertilizing) allow you to observe some of the natural variation which one tends to overlook when limited to clones widespread in the hobby.


Great point here. With the usteriana, I have simply left them alone and the fruits just formed on there own. On other plants (a couple varieties of cordata) that have flowered have not shown fruit. Neither has my nurii. Is there a way to pollinate the flowers artificially? Looks like my coronata will be blooming in a couple of days and I would love to have seeds from it.


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## Kai Witte (Jan 30, 2006)

Sure, you can help a plant to set seeds. The textbooks state that you'd need to transfer pollen from 3rd day stamens to the stigmas of 1st day female flowers (you have to carefully cut a fairly large window into the kettle). Ideally, you'd do this with plants from different clones originating from the same collecting locality. You don't have that? Don't despair - it usually seems possible to pollinate crypts with donors from the same clone. Moreover, me and several others have succeeded to obtain viable seed from a single flower: There seems to be a period on the second day when pollen is already present and the stigmas of the same inflorescence still receptive. It still is a bit of a hit or miss approach - so just give it a try but don't expect a high success rate!


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## Kai Witte (Jan 30, 2006)

BTW, check out this pic from Jan's crypts pages if you're not fluent with the botanical terminology:
http://132.229.93.11/Cryptocoryne/Botanical/pictures/spatha.gif


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## Xema (Mar 24, 2004)

Kai Witte said:


> Sure, you can help a plant to set seeds. The textbooks state that you'd need to transfer pollen from 3rd day stamens to the stigmas of 1st day female flowers (you have to carefully cut a fairly large window into the kettle). Ideally, you'd do this with plants from different clones originating from the same collecting locality. You don't have that? Don't despair - it usually seems possible to pollinate crypts with donors from the same clone. Moreover, me and several others have succeeded to obtain viable seed from a single flower: There seems to be a period on the second day when pollen is already present and the stigmas of the same inflorescence still receptive. It still is a bit of a hit or miss approach - so just give it a try but don't expect a high success rate!


How can you determinate when is the first day???...

I think is a nice point this of getting seeds


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## Kai Witte (Jan 30, 2006)

Sorry for being terse: 1st day of an inflorescence with opened spathe.


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## Xema (Mar 24, 2004)

Kai Witte said:


> Sorry for being terse: 1st day of an inflorescence with opened spathe.


well, in my experience, the sphate gets opened some days during... So, do we take as first stage of the flower? when we can see the throat opened or when is totally opened?


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## Kai Witte (Jan 30, 2006)

Xema said:


> well, in my experience, the sphate gets opened some days during... So, do we take as first stage of the flower? when we can see the throat opened or when is totally opened?


Hello Xema,

Sorry, I misunderstood you. With me the first functional day of flowering has usually been fairly obvious. Some inflorescences started to open already a day earlier (usually during the afternoon or later) but usually this was confined to partial opening of the limb (with the throat still pretty much covered). I have no idea wether such variation affects ripening of the male flowers.

All the observations I mentioned are pretty anecdotal (I'm not aware that anyone studied this in detail) and none of the suggestions are written in stone - so just experiment! And please report back, too. BTW, the key for ready male flowers are tiny droplets at the tip of the little tubes (get a good magnifying lens!). I usually cut the spadix and use forceps to take all male flowers out and then try to transfer those droplets with the pollen directly onto the stigmas. It's a little finicky but it sounds worse than it actually is...


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## Aaron (Feb 12, 2004)

Thanks Kai for all the great info. The seed pod did eventually open up and I collected the seeds. They are a decent size and I planted them in another pot. It's been some time since I've done this and there has been no signs of germination yet. I was quite cavalier in planting them so I do not expect much. I have several flowers ready to bloom soon and will try to transfer pollen from one to another, just to see if I can get it to work...

Here is another bloom of a plant that was sent to me as C. coronata. I received the plant this past summer. It arrived in poor shape, but quickly recovered. upon blooming, it appears to be another form of C. usteriana.

here is the plant. It resides in a 6 inch pot. 









closeup of the inflorescence









closeup of leaf. It is more of a brownish maroon color in real life


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## Kai Witte (Jan 30, 2006)

Hello Aaron!



> Thanks Kai for all the great info. The seed pod did eventually open up and I collected the seeds. They are a decent size and I planted them in another pot. It's been some time since I've done this and there has been no signs of germination yet. I was quite cavalier in planting them so I do not expect much. I have several flowers ready to bloom soon and will try to transfer pollen from one to another, just to see if I can get it to work...


Did you put the seed on the soil surface? I often keep the seeds in water until they start sprouting (which is usually pretty fast).



> Here is another bloom of a plant that was sent to me as C. coronata. I received the plant this past summer. It arrived in poor shape, but quickly recovered. upon blooming, it appears to be another form of C. usteriana.


Yep, that's usteriana.


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## Aaron (Feb 12, 2004)

Kai,
the seeds where buried (not too deeply) in a sandy substrate... in my emersed setup. I did not even think to put them in water. Oh well, next time... 

Regarding the usteriana, I was a little disappointed when the flower openned revealing the yellow color, but at the same time, I happily welcome any of the different forms of one of my favorite crypts. It is interesting to note that this second plant (which I believe is the same as the "Morco form" according to CP) is very large in comparison to my other, more traditional looking form of usteriana from Oriental Aquarium. Once I have more plants to play with, I am going to submerge it to see what it looks like under water. My experience with usteriana is that it is larger and more bullate when grown submersed.


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## Kai Witte (Jan 30, 2006)

Hello Aaron,



> the seeds where buried (not too deeply) in a sandy substrate... in my emersed setup. I did not even think to put them in water.


That usually works, too, since the seed are large and readily sprouting. However, in water it's easier to monitor wether they are just not viable or if they succumb to early fungal infections, etc.



> Regarding the usteriana, I was a little disappointed when the flower openned revealing the yellow color, but at the same time, I happily welcome any of the different forms of one of my favorite crypts. It is interesting to note that this second plant (which I believe is the same as the "Morco form" according to CP) is very large in comparison to my other, more traditional looking form of usteriana from Oriental Aquarium. Once I have more plants to play with, I am going to submerge it to see what it looks like under water. My experience with usteriana is that it is larger and more bullate when grown submersed.


Yup, expect them to gain quite a bit. The largest form has very long leaves like aponogetifolia which get over 3" broad!


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