Hoya sp. NS05-240 was discovered in 2005 by Nathalie Simonsson during her travels.  I am unsure where this plant is endemic, and if any of you out there know the answer, please contact me. I know that I received this Hoya as a cutting from Ric Morier probably in 2013, or 2014.

I started this cutting over many times during the first 3 years that I owned this plant, and invariably I would rot the roots off.  It was just a very difficult Hoya to get growing.  I would just start to see some new growth, and then it would just sit there for months doing nothing.  The leaves looked like those on Hoya DS-70 and I expected it to be easy like that plant and nothing could be further from the truth! After 3 or 4 years of fiddling with this Hoya, It finally turned the corner when I started it over using a series of net pots where I could actually see what I was doing as far as watering the plant. I was thrilled to finally see good growth and an actual plant materializing out of the tiny cuttings that I was forced to use this go around with this tough to grow little Hoya.  After about two years of growth, I was finally rewarded with my first peduncle, and was really thrilled!

I was completely taken by surprise at how long the peduncles on this Hoya were.  I think that they are among the longest in the Hoya world; below you can see that the peduncle itself is 9.5 inches long.  Add in the length of the pedicels and your talking almost 11 inches! Hoya sp. NS05-240 is one of the many Hoyas in the section called Acanthostemma.

This Hoya was a real challenge for me to not only bring into flower, but to grow as well.  I think if you follow my advice and grow this plant in a series of net pots, it is a plant that can be brought into flower in a couple of years when grown in a warm high humidity environment.  If you don’t have such an environment, I think there are better candidates to consider such as good old DS-70.  I am however very happy that I was able to flower this one on two separate occasions.  I rate this Hoya on a degree of difficulty scale with 1 being dead easy and 10 being impossible at a 6.