# How do you differentiate?



## turbomkt (Mar 31, 2004)

I'm constantly amazed at the ability for everyone on here to identify plants from pictures. The one thing I can't get too easily is differentiating between some of the similar varieties.

So...can someone tell me what this one is? Is it green? Brown? Red? Rose veins? Tips on telling the difference?

Thanks,
Mike




























p.s. My full gallery is here if you want to get to bigger pictures.


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## Phil Edwards (Jan 22, 2004)

Turbo,

Differentiating between some species is easy, such as balansae vs. ciliata. However, differentiating between varieties is nearly impossible because of the very morphic nature of the plants. I've had the exact same plant look totally different after it was moved from one tank to another. Most often we make an educated guess, but it's still a guess. 

My guess is that you've got Green wendtii or walkeri there.

Best,
Phil


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## turbomkt (Mar 31, 2004)

Based on pics in the books (Kasselmann, etc) the leaf shapes look just like the wendtii pic of the "brown" form. Same shape, ruffles, etc. And I guess the pictures I posted don't really show any of the leaves that are less green than brown. In fact, other than some of the really young leaves, they all have at least red/brown up the middle and most have a good majority of the leaf not green.

I keep NO3 somewhere in the 5-15ppm range and P is .5-1.0 when I mearsure, so I don't think it's from an imbalance.

Oh well...just trying to get smarter. Thanks for the answer!

--Mike


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## HeyPK (Jan 23, 2004)

I am guessing green wendtii. Some of the leaves look a little wide for walkeri. It is easiest to tell when you have large mature leaves. When plants are just getting started, and have little leaves they look more alike. Wendtii varieites tend to have leaves that are widest at the base and taper to the tip. They have big waves along the edges and little crinkling on top of the big waves. C. beckettii has big waves without the added little crinkles. The leaves of beckettii are generally uniformly colored on top, whereas the leaves of the wendtii varieties may have darker stripes or streaking. Some of the wendtii varieties may have leaves that are somewhat hammered looking (bullate). This is especially true for the "red" wendtii. The walkeri varieties generally have narrower leaves than the wendtii varieties. They are pretty big plants with the largest leaves getting close to a foot long. C. undulata is a smaller variety that has little waves along the edges and often stripes visible on the topside of the leaf that follow the side veins comming off of the midrib. If a little crowded, the rhizome of C. undulata starts to elongate giving actual intenodes between the leaves. This is not seen in other species. C. petchii, regarded as a triploid form of C. beckettii is hard to distinguish It tends to have little waves along the leaf edges. There are some rather different looking varieties being sold as petchii. I have one of them, that other people are calling petichii, and this one has a characteristic that the youngest leaf, tightly rolled up, pokes up through the previous leaf, which has not finished unrolling.


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## turbomkt (Mar 31, 2004)

HeyPK,
I used the pics of the younger plants because they were easier to get a picture of. I'm in the process of yanking out some amazon sword to clear things up. From your description it's most likely wendtii (And that's what I thought it was). The major question I had was what "color." I wasn't sure with all of the red the pictures don't show through too well.

Thanks,
Mike


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