What's This Structure?

From: Theodore Held <oppenhauser2001 at gmail.com> on 2011.04.18 at 16:11:27(22031) Dear wise people, This plant is ostensibly the water aroid Cryptocoryne balansae, but may be better described as C. crispatula, var. balansae. Regardless of actual identity, this plant seems to like to develop curious adventitious rootlike structures at old leaf nodes per the picture. The ruler is denominated in US inches. The structures are limited in size to about what you see. They appear on specimens growing submerged. Further, they always extend upwards in the water column, not down. They are not especially long-lived, generally falling away as another leaf node is exposed following the death of the oldest leaf on the stem. This Crypt variety is consistent with these structures and I've not seen many others, if any. It might be diagnostic of the clone. One theory I have is that they may be adapted to gather and pump in oxygen from the water to aerate roots growing in anoxic conditions. Ideas anyone? +More Ted Held. --20cf3054965bcef01404a133a4a0 _______________________________________________ Aroid-L mailing list Aroid-L@www.gizmoworks.com http://www.gizmoworks.com/mailman/listinfo/aroid-l --20cf3054965bcef01404a133a4a0--

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