The only person Julie could find that had flowered this plant was a woman named Lina from the Ukraine. I was unable gather much info from her primarily because of the language issue. From what I gathered she flowered it without lights in the early summer, and watered it very little in the winter. I took this as a sign that perhaps this is a plant that needed increasing day length to trigger flowering. I moved it from 12 hours of light to 15 hours. It took a long time, but on one of its rare waterings, I finally found a short hidden peduncle. It just started to bud up!

My plant was growing into a behemoth that finally had to be moved up to an 8″ pot and then I had to engineer a trellis to work with it. What puzzled me was how could I have such a large plant and never been able to spot a peduncle on it. I felt that there must be some missing element like day length that was not allowing it to want to form peduncles and bud up. I finally got so frustrated that I reached out to Julie Kennedy from the UK to see if any of her European connections had been able to flower it and to find out there secret.

Now that I had a new plant to work with, I was very excited and really did not want to end up losing it. It grew well right from the start and required several up-pottings. One of the things I wanted to guard again was losing this one to root rot so I kept it in pots that allowed me to see more easily when to water this plant. I finally took to actually writing down when I watered the plant to better track it. This is a Hoya that takes very little water. I have been able to go as long as a month in between waterings which is unheard of for me.

By taking that early cutting for use in a trade, did not leave myself any kind of insurance against failure of the main plant. I recommend to never take a cutting of a plant until you have had it at least a year. I managed to find another plant for sale from UPT in the summer of 2020, and I paid what for me was a goodly sum for it, but what I received was an outstandingly healthy plant rooted in coconut husk chips. It was well worth the money paid.

I received a small rooted plant of Hoya maingayi in May of 2019. It arrived in decent shape for a plant coming all the way from Thailand. It grew a little, but what I did next is a cautionary tale, and one I recommend to guard against. Someone approached me and desperately wanted a cutting of Hoya maingayi in trade, and I violated my no cut until it flowers rule and took a cutting. What remained of the plant never bounced back, and developed root rot. There was just enough left to take a one node cutting, but it never really took and I lost the plant.

I actually flowered this Hoya at the end of December, but I’m just getting around to discussing it now. It took me about 3 years to bring this one into flower, and I pretty excited about it. Tomorrow I will begin my discussion in earnest.

Of the thousands of Hoya Bella flowers that I have had over the past 15 years or so, this is only the second time that I had a pollination. These Bella seedpods mature so slowly, and if it behaves like the one I had a few years ago, the seed germinates slower than any Hoya seed that I have ever planted. It took a full 3 weeks to get germination. I will report back if I have better luck or quicker results this go around.

Dale Kloppenburg rarely found a Hoya that he did not want to name as a new species; he would be known as the ultimate splitter. Other plant scientists are lumpers that want to roll many current species under one umbrella species with many subspecies, or variations. An example of this philosophy would be that all of the former Hoya pottsii geographic varieties, Hoya limoniaca, Hoya neocaledonica, and Hoya hellwigiana have all been rolled into Hoya nicholsoniae. What are my thoughts on this? I will let the plant scientists duke it out as I am no botanist. I do think however that the best approach would be a compromise between the splitters and lumpers.

Below is an example of a lumping together that I don’t really understand. Hoya danumensis is on the left and Hoya danumensis ssp. Amarii is on the right. In the old days H. danumensis ssp. Amarii would have been a new species, but now it is lumped in as a sub-species of H. danumensis. To my untrained eyes, other than both being campanulate flowers, they look completely different. The coronas are not remotely alike, flower size, shape, and coloration are all different.

Hoya sp. Wavy Leaves is really nothing more than an H. clemensiorum and as such does not grow particularly well for me. This species needs so much warmth and humidity that it is difficult for me to provide.

Today is our final day looking at Hoya griffithii var. silver. It should be noted that the only major difference between the regular H. griffithii and this variant is the variant has smaller leaves with much more silver splash. The flowers are identical; there is a variant or subspecies out there that has gold flowers, which I would like to have a crack at some day. It took a long time to get this one growing well, but it was well worth the effort; this plant gets a my highest recommendation!