Hoya lanceolata Bella is flowering like crazy right now.  It really needs to be up-potted right now, but I probably will just take cuttings and restart the plant.  I don’t have the room any longer for these monstrously huge Bella plants so I need to keep it small.

Hoya sp. SR-2009-003 and Hoya sp. EPC-966 are the two accession numbers for this plant.  It also seems to be available in a yellow corona and red corona clone.  I have the red corona.

This is a great plant with the most photogenic of flowers but is not a Hoya for beginners.  It seems very demanding and the roots rot easily so I can’t really recommend it except for those up for a challenge.

Upon closer inspection of the plant, I could see that the leaves lacked turgor, and were almost limp.  I pulled it out of the pot and the roots were completely rotten once again.  This time I took several cuttings which are now rooting in water.  I’m sure that I will be able to save the plant, and this time it will not go back into my amended soil mix.  I will be looking for something with far less water holding capacity as this plant is incredibly susceptible to root rot!

After fooling around with this plant for at least 3 years, I finally got a decent set of blooms out of it, and then it started putting on peduncles and flowering like crazy.  This was not necessarily a good thing as this was a plant that was trying to survive by producing flowers but actually was near death.

This is a plant where a peduncle does not necessarily mean quick blooms.  Probably around eight sets of buds blasted before I could bring any to term and the first set of flowers were so weak that they barely opened and fell off.

After discovering root rot, I took cuttings and started the plant over again using a series of net pots to help aid in when to water. About one year after starting the plant over I spotted a peduncle.

I received Hoya sp. Perak Teddy Bear in a trade from a grower in North Carolina in 2015.  I rooted it, and the plant did poorly from the start. After a year, it might have put on one new leaf, but that was about it.  I pulled the plant out of the pot in mid 2016 and the roots were rotten, as is usually the case with a poorly performing Hoya.

Hoya sp. Perak Teddy Bear comes from the jungles of Perak, Malaysia.  There are 13 states in Malaysia; Perak is the fourth largest one. Temperature is fairly constant, that is, from 23 °C to 33 °C, with humidity often more than 82.3 per cent. Annual rainfall measures at 3,218 mm.  Below the flowers of the plant; they are fuzzy like a teddy bear, hence the name.

Hoya sp. Perak Teddy Bear has been a bear to flower, and a bear to grow; pun intended. Below the foliage of the plant.

I will be chopping up this magnificent Hoya imperialis Palawan and selling it off as cuttings so I don’t think that I will ever get to see the flowers on this one again. It took me 2 years to flower it the first time, and I won’t wait that long again. I simply don’t have the room to keep all of these giant growing Hoyas, but I am happy that I got to see it flower a few times, and now I get to pass it on for others to try their luck with it!