Even though I can’t grow Hoya sp. aff. Bella PES-03 worth a #*&#, it still will occasionally flower for me. From this morning:

This plant flowered right inside on the windowsill. I believe that is a first. Hoya polystachya has always flowered in the past in a humid summer greenhouse for me.

I started my Hoya polystachya over a couple of years ago, and now have two very nice plants that I can be proud of. I live in fear of putting these plants outside and sun burning them so I will play it safe and keep them inside this year. Here is one of the plants from this morning in its entirety; tomorrow the flowers.

I have to say that the new leaves that emerge from this species are very dark and much more handsome than they are after they fade to a flat, light, green color. I wish that I had a photo of them, but if I keep the plant around long enough hopefully I will be rewarded with more leaves to photograph. I can’t really say one way or another yet whether this plant is worth keeping, or not. I should know more at the end of the summer.

I really have nothing more to report about this Hoya as I can find out nothing about it other than it is supposed to come from the Philippines.

I was pretty shocked when the flowers opened and they were the typical Hoya finlaysonii complex flowers. I would not have guessed that this plant fell into that category as the leaves had none of the traditional venation or markings of that complex. The flowers had no scent and began closing in less than 48 hours.

Despite not being a strong grower, and I believe that to be a reflection on my growing conditions and not on the plant, I eventually moved it up to a five inch terracotta pot. It sat there and did nothing most of the winter and finally put on a peduncle and began budding up.

This cutting rooted quite easily in water and I transferred it to a 2 inch pot and then moved up to 3 inch. I cannot say that it was a easy quick grower for me, but it never lost its active growing tip. I was excited to see this one flower as the leaves were quite different looking.

I received Hoya sp. Philippines Long Leaves EPC-869 from Jimmy Myers last summer and flowered it in about one year. Here are the flowers with more on the plant in the next few days.

It has probably been about 3 years since I’ve seen the flowers on this one. I have to say that the flowers a cute as they are sure don’t last very long. They close up after only a couple of days.