In the last few weeks I have made a couple of trips out to Brazos Bend State Park (BBSP) near Houston after hearing about it from a friend. There are lot of aquatic plants around the park and some interesting wildlife. I could not do any collection here as this is a state park and collection is prohibited.
Echinodorus cordifolius were growing huge and were ominipresent around all the lakes.
E.cordifolius flower
Polygonum hydropiperoides growing through out the park were in full bloom.
As I looked around the bank of the lake for more plants and was trying to reach for some Limnobium laevigatum (Amazon Frogbit) , this guy waited patiently for me to do a mistake.
This beauty had ventured quiet far from the lake probably to lay eggs.
Pistia stratiotes and this Hydrocotyle sp was also easy to spot along the lake.
Hydrocotyle sp
Nelumbo lutea (American lotus)
A view of the Elm Lake, one of the few lakes in BBSP.
Sagittaria platyphylla was another plant common along the lake’s bank.
This yellow crowned night heron tolerated me quiet a bit as I kept on disturbing him as he hunted for his supper.
This guy was not so accomodating.
A sunset at 40-Acre Lake.
Cryptocoryne wendtii ‘Florida Sunset’ was introduced to the hobby by Florida Aquatic Nursery(FAN) in November of 2008 at the AGA convention. It was not until March,2009 that FAN started shipping out this plant to its distributors. C.wendtii ‘Florida Sunset’ is a variant of C.wendtii ‘Mi oya’. In emersed culture the leaves are brown with shades of pink and small amount of white.
C.wendtii ‘Florida Sunset’ is a easy plant to grow both emersed and submerged. It loses its variegated form underwater.This Cryptocoryne is extremely easy to flower. My plant send out a spathe approximately one month after it was planted in my emersed set-up and has been putting out spathes continuously since then.
The twisted yellow limb of the spathe is clearly visible in the picture above. This is not typical of a C. wendtii limb which is generally reddish brown. The deep brown collar is fairly pronounced.
A cross-section of the kettle shows a short spadix.
