I received Hoya sp. Surigao Del Sur late last summer as a freebie in a trade with a nice woman from Maine. The Hoya that I traded for was called H. Scarlett O’Hoya with a name like that how could I refuse. So far that cultivar has not done particularly well for me, but the one that came as an extra has behaved spectacularly. The leaf coloration alone is reason enough to grow this one!

As the name suggests, this Hoya comes from Surigao Del Sur, which is a province in the Philippines situated in the Caraga region occupying the northeastern section of Mindanao. Its capital is the City of Tandag.

Rather than move this very handsome specimen of Hoya polystachya outside for the summer I opted to let in live in the living room on the windowsill. I have been burned too many times in moving specimen plants outside only to have them ruined with sunscald. It only needs to be a couple of hours of sun sometimes, and it will ruin a Hoya that you have put months or even years into.

Hoya carmelae is a Hoya that I have messed around with now for about eight years without so much as a peduncle being formed. Now it won’t be long, and I will have flowered this Hoya from my Hall of Shame List that I made a couple of years ago. It also helps ease the pain of having the buds blast on my H. desvoeuxensis a couple of months ago. Much more on all of this after the blooms open! Here are some buds in the meantime from two different peduncles:

Hoya stenophylla is a very unusual, oddball Hoya that I feel privileged to have been lucky enough to flower. The plant is capable of blooming at a very young age and makes a very interesting specimen just grown for the leaves. I don’t believe it will ever really be a mainstream houseplant as the conditions under which it grows are fairly exacting, bud for collectors who want to put in the effort, I can highly recommend the plant.

Hoya stenophylla was named as a species by Rudolf Schlechter. I have seen his name attached to a number of Hoya species so I did a little research on him and will share some of it here. Schlechter was born in 1872 in Berlin, Germany and was the 3rd of 6 children. He authored several works on orchids and proposed at least 1,000 species in Orichidaceae alone. He traveled the world extensively collecting plants and spent several years in what was then called German New Guinea. It was while living here that he discovered H. stenophylla with the name meaning slender leaves. He died in 1925, leaving behind a vast herbarium, which sadly was destroyed in the bombing of Berlin in 1945.

Hoya stenophylla was found on trees in the forest of the Torricelli Mountains of Northeastern New Guinea at about 800 meters of elevation. Thanks to Mary Carroll for finding this information for me!

I believe that I may be the first person to flower Hoya stenophylla in the U.S. so I am going to lay out my exact conditions for those who want to try to duplicate the feat.

Temperatures at night varied from a low of 59 degrees F to a high of 62 degrees F. The daytime temps varied from a low of 76 F to a high of 80 F. Humidity was always above 75%. The plant received 15 hours of indirect high output LED lighting. By indirect I mean that it did not hang directly under, but just off to the side of a light that was so powerful that it burned holes in the leaves of some of my other Hoyas such as H. icensis.

I even set my alarm and went into the cold dark basement in the middle of the night and this was as far as the flowers ever opened for me:

I was so very excited to come downstairs and examine these buds with a lighted magnifier every day. I think that most of the fun in growing these Hoyas is the anticipation brought on by bud development. This turned out to definitely be the case when the flowers finally opened on this plant. This is one of those Hoyas in which the flower only partially opens during the daylight hours; the corolla never fully extends even at night.