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laterite and plant question reply

Dear Stephen,

I am not an expert on plants, so I can't help too much with your plant
question.  There are some good sites which have pictures and
descriptions which may help you identify your plant.  Maybe someone else
on the list can help with those.

At the Dupla home page (http://www.dupla.com) on the internet is a very
good article about laterite.  If you have internet access it is worth
visiting to answer your questions.  I copied a small piece from their
article "Laterite in the tropics" at 

http://www.dupla.com/e037.htm



      " What exactly is laterite? Laterite is a type of soil, red in
colour, which is 		mainly
       found in the tropics. Aquaristic travellers will always notice it
occurring in 		the vicinity
       of tropical waters.
       Whereas laterite is considered an infertile soil for the purposes
of agriculture 	it is of
       elementary importance for bodies of water and thus also for
submerse growing
       plants.
       Under reduction conditions, i.e. in the absence of oxygen,
bivalent iron is 		dissolved
       from laterite in the ground-water. This can be noticed by the
reddish-brownish
       colour at the point where the ground-water surfaces. Such seepage
spots close to
       water-courses are also referred to as 'nutrient sources' because
analyses have
       shown high contents of nutrients suitable for aquatic plants
present in this 		seepage water."


If you go to their home page choose the english version and then go to
the library of articles.  The laterite article takes a while to load due
to some graphics and lenght of the article so be patient.

If you do not have internet access please write me back and I will try
to help further.  Good luck

Pat
guerber at localaccess_com

> I am the 9th grader who posted the question about what type of plant i had,
> and if laterite was a hard packed rainforest soil.  Because I know most of
> you don't like to reply to people that don't state their names.  Although i
> don't understand you're reasons for this i will give my name because i need
> some replies.
> 
> Stephen Martin in houston Texas
>