Uthai Treesukhon is a Thai Hoya collector who issued many of his plants accession numbers and Hoya sp. UT-033 is one of those Hoyas. I’m assuming it is endemic to Thailand, but have no real information on it other than its accession number.

I received this plant as a small rooted cutting from Julie Kennedy in 2013.  I planted it into my regular mix; it grew a little and languished a lot. This Hoya did not do much for its first couple of years with no indication that it would ever produce a peduncle.  I finally pulled it out of its pot late in 2015 and discovered, as I frequently seem to, that the roots were rotten. I finally took cuttings and restarted it in hydroton using the semi-hydro method.  It seemed to like growing in hydroton and almost immediately showed much more vigorous growth.  It grew in the same 4.5 inch x 7 inch semi-hydro container for a couple of years.  When the roots filled the container I moved up to a 6 inch x 9 inch pot.

While this Hoya grew vigorously, I was kind of dismayed that I would get no peduncles even when I used numerous tricks like using various blooming fertilizers.  Finally this past winter I started using exclusively RO water with all of my unflowered Hoyas, and after almost six long years I got my first peduncle, and shortly there after, another. The buds developed quickly and flowered soon after.  The flowers have a very mild, fruity fragrance.

After Hoya sp. UT-033 flowered the first time, it flowered numerous times on multiple peduncles throughout the summer, but cease all vegetative growth.  I have had this happen before on multiple Hoyas and it usually means that it is time to restart the plant.

I will be taking a couple of cuttings from this wonderful plant, but I may never see blooms from this one again, because if it takes another five years to flower, I’m unsure that I will still be with the hobby at that point.  Perhaps it can be flowered sooner if one used rainwater, or RO water right from the start.  That is what I will shoot for.

This is a plant that gets my highest recommendation; for even if one can’t flower it, the foliage more than makes up for those shortcomings.