Hoya ‘Jiffy Brian’ is a no id Hoya with an interesting story which has led me to give it a whimsical name.  It came to me five years ago from Julie Kennedy with the tag of H. shepherdii. A year after I received the plant labeled as H. shepherdii from Julie I received an email from her apologizing for the mistake.  She had received the plant with the wrong ID attached, and she sent me a beautiful cutting of the real H. shepherdii to make up for it.

Having chosen to grow out my noid until it flowered took considerable patience.  The plant no matter what I did, or conditions I gave it simply wasn’t interested in flowering. A couple of years ago I noticed that it formed a few peduncles, but for what ever reason, could not, or would not form buds. A Photo of the foliage below shows the long stretched out carnosa type leaves.

After five years with no sign of buds forming on my crazy noid, I decided this was it. I was going to put the plant outside all summer, and was going to flower this Hoya, or kill it.  Well, I sunburned the heck out of the top leaves, and finally when moving some plants around to get a cutting, I found real buds almost ready to open at the bottom of the plant!

When I knew that I was finally going to flower my noid, I contacted Julie Kennedy to see if she could give me any history of this plant, and she very kindly relayed a truly wonderful story.  Below is a direct excerpt of her email to me, and it will give you the answer to why I call my noid Hoya ‘Jiffy Brian’.

It came originally from a retired gentleman on the Isle of Wight. His name on eBay was JiffyBrian, because he rooted all of his cuttings in jiffy pots?. He was the only Hoya seller back then. I vaguely remember he was a retired policeman.

I am going back 14-15 years now, so the memory is a bit vague, however, Brian’s wife was seriously ill, so he decided to sell off what was then a pretty extensive Hoya collection. He basically said the plants were too large to post, and anyone who wanted some would have to go to collect them. I emailed him, and on our agreed weekend. I drove all the way from Harlington, got the ferry to the Isle of Wight, drove around the island until I found him, and voila! Brian had a 40 foot amazing greenhouse stuffed to the gunnels with hoyas❤️❤️

I basically filled the car up with whatever would cram in there and gave him £120 for the car-ful. Back then you didn’t see collections like you do now, however I got a massive dickasonia from him, which was amazing for about 4 years, then died on me. All my original pubicalyx, carnosas, australis, Minibelle, shepherdell, polyneura etc came from him.

His daughter had made a lovely afternoon tea for us, so we ate scones, drank tea and talked Hoyas. It was lovely, as there were very few Hoya enthusiasts then. It was quite sad, as this was his passion, but he needed to spend more time caring for his wife. I remember promising him faithfully I would take care of them, and to this day I have most of what he sold me, or cuttings of those original plants of they got too big❤️ Also, to this day I have never driven so far by myself on one day!

Great story and a great plant – The end!