I love this Hoya and for anyone who struggles growing the regular Hoya serpens, I strongly urge you to give this much easier clone a try. The flowers may be slightly more impressive on the regular H. serpens, but the much easier cultivation requirements of Hoya aff. serpens (Xiaojie 001) more than makes up for it. This Hoya gets my highest recommendation!
Both plants flowering at the same time so what the heck?
The photo says it all!
Here are a couple close ups of the flowers of Hoya aff. serpens (Xiaojie 001):
Xiaojie means Miss, or young lady in China, but it has apparently fallen out of favor, and depending on where you use it in the country, you could be causing offense.
The top photo is Hoya aff. serpens (Xiaojie 001) and the bottom photo is of the regular Hoya serpens that has been in the trade for decades. The regular serpens is far more pubescent with a heavy green tinge to the flowers; it also has a wonderful scent. Hoya aff. serpens (Xiaojie 001) is not nearly as pubescent, the flowers have a pink tinge to the corolla, and there is little to no scent.
I think that the flowers on Xiaojie would have made an excellent time-lapse video as they opened slowly over the course of 24 hours. Below the blooms on this excellent little Hoya.
I finally decided that I wanted to try to flower Xiaojie 001 so I moved it for two months into a grow tent with 12 hour days, and then in April of this year moved it back up to 14 hour days, and I was lucky, almost immediately it started to bud up!
I grew this Hoya in my regular humid grow tent with constant day length of 14 hours, but knew that it was unlikely to ever flower that way. The regular serpens only flowers when the day length increases in the spring. I did not worry about that because I was primarily interested in getting the plant to a large enough size to want to flower. It was a very good grower and put on many peduncles, and went through a series of up-pottings.
This new Hoya serpens’ clone could not have come along at a better time for me as I had struggled with the regular H. serpens for years, and was on the verge of losing it. It did finally succumb to root mealies less than a year later. I chopped up the cutting that was gifted to me into three small pieces and rooted them in coconut husk chips. What I noticed almost immediately was how much easier Xiaojie 001 grew than the regular serpens that I had kept for 15 years.
