I used to think that Hoya sp. EPC-319 was an easy plant and did not treat it with the respect that it deserved. This was not the right treatment and this plant has barely hung on over the last couple of years to the point where I thought it was lost, but finally it has come back. I will never take this one for granted again!
What a wonderful plant, it flowered only a month ago and has budded up yet again and flowered. This has happened practically in the dark on the windowsill; it makes no sense, but I’ll take it!
Today we come to an end of my discussion of the Hoya paulshirleyi Seedling. This plant is essentially Hoya ‘Paula’ that can’t be called Hoya ‘Paula.’ It is more vigorous, and I think a prettier plant overall than Hoya paulshirleyi. If you can find this plant, I can highly recommend it!
I thought that it would be interesting to compare the two flowers side by side. Hoya paulshirleyi Seedling on the left and Hoya paulshirleyi on the right. It is interesting to note that besides the corolla and corona being different colors the shape of the corona is different as well.
All of these Hoyas that went out as H. GN-01 should now be called a Hoya paulshirleyi seedling. While they may look and behave identically to Hoya Paula, they cannot be called such as the only plant that maybe called Hoya Paula are the vegetative cuttings that come from that original named plant.
Ordinarily when creating a cultivar, the proper procedure is to document what you did to created the hybrid. The seedlings should be grown out and the the one that shows the greatest vigor and desirable traits is kept, and all of the other seedlings are culled. The plant that is chosen is then named and generally registered with the proper international society. Apparently this society does not exist for Hoyas strangely enough. Please correct me if I am wrong here, but according to the information that I found online there is no international cultivar registration authority for Hoyas.
The plant that is registered and named then becomes the plant which is propagated from cuttings and only that plant can be considered the named cultivar.
After sending out all of these seedlings from the Hoya paulshirleyi seedling cross, the owner of Gardino Nursery decided that they wanted to have a named cultivar and chose one of these seedlings and named it Paula after their daughter. Being new to the cultivar game, they did not understand the proper procedure for creating a name cultivar. Tomorrow I will go into how this is usually handled.