I finally decided that I wanted to try to flower Xiaojie 001 so I moved it for two months into a grow tent with 12 hour days, and then in April of this year moved it back up to 14 hour days, and I was lucky, almost immediately it started to bud up!

I grew this Hoya in my regular humid grow tent with constant day length of 14 hours, but knew that it was unlikely to ever flower that way. The regular serpens only flowers when the day length increases in the spring. I did not worry about that because I was primarily interested in getting the plant to a large enough size to want to flower. It was a very good grower and put on many peduncles, and went through a series of up-pottings.

This new Hoya serpens’ clone could not have come along at a better time for me as I had struggled with the regular H. serpens for years, and was on the verge of losing it. It did finally succumb to root mealies less than a year later. I chopped up the cutting that was gifted to me into three small pieces and rooted them in coconut husk chips. What I noticed almost immediately was how much easier Xiaojie 001 grew than the regular serpens that I had kept for 15 years.

Today we start our discussion of Hoya aff. serpens (Xiaojie 001), which just flowered for the first time this week. I received this plant as a cutting from Rachel Colette Conroy late in the summer of 2022 with the following information on the tag: Hoya aff. serpens (xiaojie 001 RC-645 Jack Wei’s #s). Below the leaves of Hoya aff. serpens (Xiaojie 001):

I thought Hoya amicabilis has a record number of flowers for me last time it bloomed but this display dwarfs it. This is only half of the plant in bloom!

Both of these were flowering at the same time so I thought why not photograph them together.

I thought I had better grab a couple of photos of Hoya bella Luis Buis in full flower before the blooms all fell off.

The flowers on Hoya leucantha are only fully open at night. I was lucky to get to this one at 5:00 am when the lights kick on in the morning. Maybe it is not so lucky if you think about it; why am I up so early in the summer time?

Since this is such a rare occurrence for me, I thought I would show the second batch of flowers that open on Hoya alagensis. Keep in mind that this was done on a regular windowsill in ambient room conditions.

Here is a handful. I just missed having Hoya onychoides in this photo by two days sadly. Once again here is Hoya imperialis, Hoya stenaokei, Hoya Kaimuki, and Hoya macgillivrayi.