FarCanal

Giving this thread a nudge, no one had offered an ID and it's been over a year. This plant will continue to be sold as tonkinensis in Australia until I get positive irrefutable proof from a source that is 100% reliable. We all know it's not tonkinensis, but what is it.

So Crypt boffin's ... how can this be achieved? Love to get an ID on this one, it is one of my favourite crispulata's. Is DNA testing an option?

ferchu22

Hi FarCanal: according to the spathe comparison with the pictures in Jan's page, it seems to be a Cryptocoryne Retrospiralis. It's similar to crispatula, but has longer leaves.
Here`s the link:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~crypts/Cryptoc...y/ret/ret.html

Regards

FarCanal

I agree that the spathe looks the most similar to Retrospiralis but nothing else matches. It's never grown smooth leaves, nor have they ever been green. I'm thinking it probably a variety of Balansae, I've read that there is a bit of variation within the Balansae.

griffin7882

it certainly does look like the balansae i have in my tank.

FarCanal

There may well be a few varieties of Balansae floating around. If you look at the 3rd picture in this link; http://www.aquaticplantcentral.com/f...5&postcount=14 you can see the standard Balansae (I'll call it that) to the left grows much larger than this plant. The Balansae in that tank grows leaves to over 1 metre while this plant gets to 60-70cm. The standard Balansae is also a much wider leaf as that picture shows and is always green.

ferchu22

The plants change their colors and shape with different conditions, but I suppose that the flower is the key to label a crypt correctly, or not?

FarCanal

That's very true. And on Jan's website he writes "Though C. retrospiralis is known for more than 150 years, little is known about the variation in this species and its habitat." so you may be right. You're not the first person to suggest Retrospiralis. The points that make me think that it isn't are the leaf shapes and colours and also other quotes from Jan's site like "C. retrospiralis is because of its seasonal character not well suited for the aquarium.". This plant is very easy to keep. I've had it now for a few years and it's never melted or gone dormant in either emersed or aquarium conditions (2 tanks).

I might email Jan himself and see what he thinks. I emailed him when the spathe first opened but didn't send him the open kettle pictures. From those pictures he said Balansae, be interesting to see what he thinks.

Ghazanfar Ghori

C. crispatula var. balansae

FarCanal

I found this book at my LFS today. It belong to the owner as one of his "under the counter reference books". It was published in 1977 so is quite a bit out of date as a reference book, but at least this bit of published information matches a Tonkinensis to a plant that looks like mine.

I know that today's discription of a Tonkinensis is nothing like this but at last I've found something that matches up to what I have.

ddavila06

thats a sweet looking flower! congrats