[Ghazanfar Ghori]

Today one of my Cryptocoryne albida plants decided to flower. I've had C. albida growing emersed for almost 18 months now. It finally decided to send up a spathe. Two in fact. The 2nd one should open up within the next two weeks. The spathe on the outside isn't very impressive. Totally different story on the inside though. Take a look...

The spathe is approximately 8 cm long from the base of the kettle to the tip of the spathe.

A creamy smooth pale color on the limb with just a few small speckles near the throat. The edges are quite pronounced.

Once cut open you can see that the small speckles turn into red patterning all the way down into the kettle.

A well formed male part of the flower.

Even the valve has the red pattern on it...

I noticed some interesting structure behind the male flower and removed it to get a better picture. These white bumps extrude from the kettle wall approximately 0.25mm

 

[DelawareJim]

Very cool! Great job.

Cheers.
Jim

 

[Khamul1of9]

Hey nice job at opening it up. I have two of these that are now recovering from aphid attack. I had ants going in out of the tank sheparding the aphids.

 

[AaronT]

That's awesome man. It's a tough one to propagate for sure. It's easy enough to grow, but runners take forever to appear for me.

 

[Ghazanfar Ghori]

That's awesome man. It's a tough one to propagate for sure. It's easy enough to grow, but runners take forever to appear for me.

Same here - lucky to get 2-3 daughter plants a year from this one. What's odd is that they always appear
outside the pot. Guess it likes to throw out long runners. I recently increased the photoperiod on this plant - could have triggered the bloom. I also beleive this crypt generally likes more light than most anyway. Did you guys read Karen Randalls article in TAG? There are pictures of it growing among rocks in full tropical sun.

 

[cryptoria]

Thanks for sharing!