This plant is living on a mostly north windowsill with no artificial aids, and the increasing day length has produced its first flowers since starting the plant over last year. Here are the freshly opened, green, flowers that have yet to reflex:

While my plant looks pretty horrible, I felt it was important to show that not every Hoya that comes into my collection turns up as a success. Despite the pretty little flowers I would have to rank Hoya Species Unknown sp. aff. solaniflora in my top 3 of the worst looking plants that I have ever produced. If I ever figure out how to grow it, I will bring it back here and tell the secret, but sadly for now I have to give it a thumbs down.

Here are a couple of close-ups of the flowers of Hoya sp. aff. solaniflora (species Unknown):

The flowers while small look quite beautiful. I could not detect a scent as of this posting.

I could not even wait for the buds to open before spraying the entire plant with sulfur. I began thinking that possible these half yellow leaves might be caused by flat mites, the invisible Hoya scourge. It is far to early to know if this will have any effect. Below some better looking leaves on my sad looking specimen:

If all of the leaves looked this good, it would be a nice looking plant. I am determined to solve this issue!

I used the same coco husk substrate with all of my plants and nothing has ever looked as bad as the leaves on Hoya Species Unknown aff. solaniflora. By the way, this plant used to be called Hoya sp. aff. solaniflora, but apparently it was decided that it was not really close enough to the real H. solaniflora to deserve the Aff. designation so now the poor thing is Hoya species unknown.

The roots on the plant look healthy, and it puts out new growth that occasionally looks pretty good so I have hopes that it turns around and becomes healthier looking with age. The plant was at least able to put out a peduncle and buds in its less than stellar condition.

I received this Hoya as a small plant from Julie Kennedy in May of 2024. None of the plants in that shipment arrived in great shape, because of postal delays. The plant was rooted in coconut husk, but the leaves became very chlorotic after 3 months of growing so I took cuttings and started two more plants. Both the original plant and the two re-starts developed half yellow leaves. I suspected some kind of nutrient deficiency, but the strange thing was that none of my other plants had anything approaching this kind of chlorosis. Note the yellow leaves in the photo.

I’m going to get the pain out of the way right off and show you a plant that ordinarily I would never reveal to the world. The plant’s name is Hoya Species Unknown aff. solaniflora. Tomorrow we begin our discussion; for now here is the plant:

There are a number of Philippine Hoyas similar to Hoya sp. Surigao Del Sur, but none of them surpass the beauty of the plant. The leaves are always a beautiful red, and the flowers are stunning. If I could only keep one Philippine Hoya besides imperialis, it would probably be this one.

Less than three months ago, I chopped up my large shrub-like Hoya stenophylla and started two hanging baskets. It probably was not the best idea that I ever had as the plant is now crawling into everything, and there is nothing I can do with the vines except cut them off. I have just put a bunch of it into my prop box to root for eBay sales this spring. Here is the hanging basket before I gave it a haircut: