Piptospatha ridleyi

Care at a glance

Overview

Treat it like a fussier Bucephalandra. Glue or tie the rhizome to rock or wood, never buried, give low to moderate light and decent flow, and then leave it alone; growth is slow and new leaves come one at a time. CO2 is not required but speeds things up, and stable parameters matter more than any target number, since swings trigger melt. High light mostly buys you algae on the old leaves. It also grows well emersed in a humid paludarium.

In the wild

A rheophyte from Peninsular Malaysia, recorded in Johor, Pahang and Selangor, not from Borneo as retail listings often claim. It grows anchored to granite boulders in and along forest streams between roughly 100 and 900 m, sitting emersed in the spray-wet air for much of the year and going fully submersed when rains raise the stream.

Good to know

An aroid of tribe Schismatoglottideae in Araceae, described in 1895 and named for Henry Ridley, the botanist who ran the Singapore Botanic Gardens. The 2018 revision of the tribe by Wong and Boyce broke Piptospatha apart and moved this species into the new genus Kiewia, honouring the botanist Ruth Kiew, though the trade has stayed with Piptospatha ridleyi. The dark green leaves carry a distinctive pale mottling that sets it apart from Bucephalandra at a glance.

Did you know

In flower it gives itself away by smell: the inflorescence releases a distinct banana scent, an aroid trick for calling in its insect pollinators along the stream banks.

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