Cryptocoryne wendtii Green Gecko

• 

  Wendtii

• 

  Green

• 

  Brown

• 

  Red

• 

  Tropica
• Mi Oya
• Green GeckoThis page
• Florida Sunset
• Sindoor

• 

  Flamingo

Care at a glance

Overview

Treat it exactly like any wendtii: plant the rosette in the mid or foreground with the crown above the substrate, feed the roots with tabs or nutrient soil, and then leave it alone. It grows in low light without CO2, and stays more compact with stronger colour zonation under brighter light. Expect crypt melt in the weeks after planting; the roots are fine and it regrows its submersed leaves. Propagate by letting runners spread or splitting off daughter plants. It tolerates hard water well.

In the wild

Green Gecko is a selection that arose in cultivation, not a wild plant. Its parent Cryptocoryne wendtii grows in Sri Lanka along shaded stream banks, submersed when the water is up and emersed the rest of the year, in everything from soft forest streams to harder limestone water. Like all wendtii forms it is farmed commercially, usually emersed.

Good to know

A cultivar of Cryptocoryne wendtii, one of the water trumpets in the family Araceae. It sits closest to wendtii 'Green' but adds a red-brown zone at the base of each blade around the midrib, under light green, wavy-edged leaves. Crypt cultivar names track leaf colour and shape rather than taxonomy; botanically this is still plain Cryptocoryne wendtii.

Did you know

Crypts are notorious for changing their look with every tank, but the dark red-brown blotch at the base of the midrib is what marks a Green Gecko out from plain wendtii Green sitting next to it on the shelf.

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• 

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