Hoya anncajanoae is endemic to to Luzon Island in the Philippines and was named after its discoverer, Ann O. Cajano, a technician at the Botanical Herbarium and Museum of Natural History, UPLB College, Leguna. It was published by Dale Kloppenburg and Simeona V. Siar in 2008.

Finally in early January of this year (2021), Hoya anncajanoae finally began to open her flowers!

After trying everything from windowsill growing, to tent growing, to greenhouse growing, with different fertilizers, and light regimens all to no avail, Hoya anncajanoae was added to my Hoya Hall of Shame. Finally after throwing it into the bottom of an upstairs grow tent as an after thought in the fall of 2020, I was blown away with a peduncle forming in December of that year. The buds steadily grew and were many times larger than on aff. burtoniae.

The leaves in coloration and in texture are very similar to Hoya sp. aff. buroniae (the former DS-70). I figured that it would be just as easy to grow, and flower as the old reliable DS-70, but alas as the years rolled by without even a peduncle, I learned that was not true.

Usually if your Hoya is not growing, and it is not in hibernation from dry winter air, it means that there is some root rot going on. I am certain that some of my issues with Hoya anncajanoae came from root rot that I kept choosing to ignore.

As with most Hoyas, this one was moved up through a series of pots starting out with a 2 inch rose pot and eventually ending up in a 6 inch plastic pot. It grew well at times, but only in stops and starts, sometimes going many months with no new growth.

Hoya anncajanoae came to me about four or five years ago with my first order from the Thai vendor AH Hoyas. I anticipated that it would flower in short order, but found out that assumption was grossly, overly, optimistic.

While these flowers look similar to Hoya australis, they are larger and more fragrant by a factor of three. Not an easy Hoya for me, and never has been, but I keep it around because of these outstanding flowers. It dislikes growing under lights and dislikes growing on the windowsill in the winter. It only grows well for me in the summer greenhouse.

While I have been slow to jump on the variegated Hoya bandwagon, thinking that many of these creations look sickly, I have to say that Hoya australis ‘Lisa’ makes a very handsome specimen. The very fragrant flowers that last about a week are a huge bonus that seem to appear when the day length begins to shorten. It is slightly sensitive to over watering, but seems otherwise to be pretty unproblematic. It gets my highest recommendation!

Hoya australis ‘Lisa’ definitely was not created in nature. Hoya australis ssp. tenuipes was taken and somehow its genes were manipulated with chemicals ,and, or radiation to create this variegated wonder. All I know about it was that it came into the trade around 2004, or 2005 and started the entire variegated Hoya craze.