[rs79]

http://images.aquaria.net/plants/Cryptocoryne/u/UST/

http://images.aquaria.net/plants/Cryptocoryne/p/PYG/submersed/

Here's pics of both. UST is pretty unmistakable. PYG looks like a tiny brown wendtii.

 

[rs79]

I haven't been able to see the pics so far - they suddenly started working. Photobuckets DNS is flakey at best it seems.

To be honest they don't look like Usteriana to me. Theyre big rigorous plants with bullate leaves, a magenta underside and a leathy olive green leaf. What you have sorta looks like brown wendtii to me.

Have you looked for the plant in the wild?

 

[rs79]

That sounds pretty cool if we can see pics of the wild plants. It'd be great if you could find a flowering spathe, too.

Can we get the name of the closest city so we can stick a pin in the (google) map there? Not too specific so the site gets raped, but enough to give us an idea.

It's an interesting looking plant. I sorta get the impression it's trying to make big leaves.

Keep in mind, C. coronata is found there too and looks a lot like (a smaller) usteriana, it has an aponogetifolia-like spath though.

But again, there are 4 known different forms of UST so its also entirely likely there are other forms too.

 

[rs79]

What color is the underside of the leaf?

When I got mine directly from Mr. Morco the wild plants were not bullate, but in a tank, submerged, they always are.

 

[rs79]

Sounds good. Are you growing them emerse or submersed? They seem to grow better submersed IMO.

 

[rs79]

I don't think they're in any trouble.

They will probably melt, but as long as they're putting up new leaves they'll do fine.

I got a small runner from Kai with one leaf. I stuck it in a tank and within a few months it was huge and had sent out many runners.

I got the plant in, I think, May 07. Heres pics:

http://images.aquaria.net/tanks/rjs/tk-1/2007/

 

[rs79]

Tap water, hard as hell. Substrate is a 10 year old tank with beach sand and manure, clay and washers under the sand. Lighting was 40W over a 20 gal tank, I did fertilize with home made aquatic plant fertilizer and usually added flourish excel or yeast Co2 although the carbon addition was sporadic.