Dale Kloppenburg rarely found a Hoya that he did not want to name as a new species; he would be known as the ultimate splitter. Other plant scientists are lumpers that want to roll many current species under one umbrella species with many subspecies, or variations. An example of this philosophy would be that all of the former Hoya pottsii geographic varieties, Hoya limoniaca, Hoya neocaledonica, and Hoya hellwigiana have all been rolled into Hoya nicholsoniae. What are my thoughts on this? I will let the plant scientists duke it out as I am no botanist. I do think however that the best approach would be a compromise between the splitters and lumpers.

Below is an example of a lumping together that I don’t really understand. Hoya danumensis is on the left and Hoya danumensis ssp. Amarii is on the right. In the old days H. danumensis ssp. Amarii would have been a new species, but now it is lumped in as a sub-species of H. danumensis. To my untrained eyes, other than both being campanulate flowers, they look completely different. The coronas are not remotely alike, flower size, shape, and coloration are all different.