Growing Hoya kenejiana Variegated Part Three

So I learned that I need to photograph a plant even if I think that it will never flower. I still can’t believe that I can’t find a photo of the plant before I chopped it up. I can tell you that this is a plant that whatever they did to its DNA to make it variegated created a strange creature. Many of its leaves would morph into distorted shapes, and I also believed that this was stopping it from flowering. I have no idea why it never bloomed on a large plant with numerous peduncles, but then flowers on a lousy looking cutting.

Growing Hoya kenejiana Variegated Part Two

The big mistake that I made with this plant is that I never photographed the plant when I had a nice size specimen. As per usual, I generally don’t photograph a plant until I’ve gotten it to flower, and I thought that my Hoya kenejiana Variegated would literally never bloom! It had numerous peduncles that would always blast newly emerging buds. It blasted these new buds scores of times until I had really long peduncles which had never produced a flower.

I finally got sick of it and chopped up the plant into cuttings. I took these cuttings and gave most of them away as freebies to customers who bought my eBay offerings. I saved the worst looking cutting, and what do you think happened? This ugly little cutting actually produced a peduncle, budded up and flowered! Below the plant:

Growing Hoya kenejiana Variegated Part One

I received this plant as a cutting from a local collector name Naomi in May of 2020 during the height of the pandemic scare. The cutting rooted quickly and surprisingly put on rapid growth. Tomorrow I will go into the big mistake that I made with this plant that still makes me mad.

Hoya danumensis Back From A Restart

My original H. danumensis had gotten to large to properly care for so I chopped it all up this spring and started a number of cuttings. I sold the best of them and I saved the two worst looking ones for myself and put them in a large pot with coconut husk, and it has already flowered! It took me forever to flower this plant originally and now it flowered in only a few months. The moral of the story is to never be afraid to restart a plant from cuttings!

Hoya inflata Is Back!

When I first got Hoya inflata about 10 years ago, I managed to grow a decent looking plant, and flowered it a number of times. Then for years, I struggled with it, and barely could get it to grow a leaf. It has been started over numerous times, and quite frankly I am surprised that I still have it. That was then, but I started it over again this spring, and for some inexplicable reason it is growing better than it has since very first plant. I have two specimens now growing leaves all over the place and one of them just flowered.