I bought Hoya sp. aff. kenejiana (Red Corona) as a cutting from Aleagarden in Thailand in the summer of 2014, and finally flowered it for the first time in May of 2017.  I bought it because I had always had good luck with its name sake, the regular version of H. kenejiana.  Unfortunately, it proved far more challenging than I had envisioned.

The first year with the plant I had the usual struggles of stops and starts from incorrect watering and cool winter temperatures.  The second year I achieved some fairly decent growth and got my first peduncle, which is always exciting. Lamentably, a peduncle with this plant means very little as they don’t want to bud up, and eventually will fall off given enough time.  This cycle of dropping peduncles went on for months until in April of 2017, one peduncle actually started to bud up and eventually flowered in mid-May.  While shooting a video of the plant, the peduncle actually broke off in my hand.  I wasn’t very happy about that let me tell you!  A month later I had three peduncles that developed more buds.  A few days before the buds would have opened, I watered the plant and within a couple of days every one of those buds fell off – at least fifty of them!

I was pretty well disgusted with the plant by this time, and put it out in the greenhouse for the summer.  There it put on very good growth and actually flowered for the second time.  There seems to be a high degree of variability in the color of the flowers depending upon the conditions under which it is grown.  I’ve seen some photos online of flowers that are far brighter yellow than mine.  Even my second flowering was of a different color than my first.

If anyone has any information on where this plant hails from along with a little history of its discovery, I would be very interested in it.  Please send it to me.  Hoya sp. aff. kenejiana (Red Corona) is not a plant for everyone, but if you are up to a little bit of a challenge, and have the room, I would pick one up. I believe that this plant needs very good strong light to flower vigorously with lots of warmth and humidity.

**Update** (February 2018) I finally have a location for this plant.  It is a native of Papua New Guinea.