# Descriptions of official wendtii varieties?



## JSeymour (May 26, 2016)

As I continue to learn more and more about Crypts, I've found it very hard to find a good complete source of species information. I'm familiar with pages such as, The Crypt Pages, illumbomb's blog, cryptocoryneandbettablogspot, RVA, but I'm surprise there isn't a scientific based site, like fishbase for fish or sealifebase for invertebrates. Is there anything like this for plants? 

Obviously, this would be a great resource for many reasons, but at the moment I'm trying to find out what differentiates the various wendtii varieties like jahnelii(brown?), krauteri(green?), nana(obviously the smallest), and rubella(red) on a scientific level. As we all know, color and size is variable even with clones. So does such a site exist?


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## Seattle_Aquarist (Mar 7, 2008)

Hi JSeymour,

Here is a link that may help you, it is to *Ghazanfar Ghori's crypt blog* it has links to about 10+ crypt sites, describes his tissue culture adventures with C. nurii, and lots more. Ghazansfar is a APC member and although he has backed down his crypt collecting due to family responsibilities he does show up from time to time.


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## JSeymour (May 26, 2016)

Ghazanfar's site should have been included in the above list, as well as over a dozen Asian and European blogs. They are great resources, but still lacking the scope I was hoping to find. It's just exhausting researching for hours on a topic that seems like it would be documented, only to not find my answer and raising even more questions. That's also part of the thrill of course, knowing that hobbyists, explorers, and researchers are all working together to figure out this mess of taxonomy. I was just trying to be lazy...


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## bdoss1985 (Aug 14, 2014)

The crypt pages is the most informative page ive found. Though there's some really nice Facebook groups if you have any questions 

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## rs79 (Dec 7, 2004)

What makes you think there's anything "official" ? They're really just names used by convention to describe certain populations of WEN in the hobby.

If you know of any more than are here, please let me know.

http://cryptocoryne.science/species/alpha/w/WEN/


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## JSeymour (May 26, 2016)

I'm aware that these are just varieties/synonyms of wendtii, but variety implies predictable inheritable traits. Somewhere in the world, in some journal perhaps, these traits will be listed. I was just curious if this info from 1975 on wendtii varieties had made it online. Thank you for the link, I'll check it out.


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## miremonster (Mar 26, 2006)

I haven't found the full text of Rataj's Cryptocoryne revision from 1975 where 5 wendtii varieties are described, but Jacobsen's 1976 paper is instructive: http://www.aroid.org/gallery/gibernau/1979/Notes on cryptocoryne of Sri Lanka - Jacobsen 1976.pdf
He writes that Rataj's C. wendtii varieties are poorly described, and that the species is certainly very variable. I remember that it was written somewhere else that one of the Rataj w. varieties isn't distinguishable from the type (that means, the herbarium sheet selected as type) of C. wendtii!

Surely Rataj's descriptions are based on certain cultivated clones, and it would be interesting to get them, maybe one could describe them as cultivars. However the problem is, there are lots of cultivated C. wendtii strains, and their plasticity etc. (Karen Randall has recently pointed out in a FB comment that issue with the number of cultivated forms of aquarium plants and their identifiability)


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## JSeymour (May 26, 2016)

Thank you for the link. I enjoy reading and was just curious what the variety descriptions said. Thank you for everyone's effort.


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## Fish Enthusiast01 (Jul 1, 2015)

Nice link! Very informative 


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