People are always asking me for cuttings or starter plants from Hoya calycina ‘Stargazer.’ I almost always have to turn them down, because the plant is simply not saleable because of its bad looking leaves, and because it does not want to grow for me. It does however flower a fair amount.

I am still unsure what this plant is supposed to be called. It was identified as Hoya apoda online because it never seemed to get more than one flower on a peduncle at one time, but now there are several peduncles with two flowers on it. Whatever the plant is called, the flowering is nothing short of spectacular!

Hoya rigidifolia keeps flowering, but it is still puzzling me about why it continues to have sticky, nectar covered vines. I believe that it has a pest, but for the life of me I cannot find it.

I feel very fortunate to have been able to flower this difficult to bloom species. The flowers have no scent, but they are extremely beautiful. This plant gets my highest recommendation as a fabulous addition to any Hoya collection and hope that it becomes very widespread.

Thank you to Mary Carroll for unearthing this information. Hoya maingayi is found in Four locations, Malacca, Gunung Arang Para, Perak, Pahang forests, southern peninsular Thailand. It mainly can be found deep in Pahang forest and southern Thailand. But it is said that Hoya maingayii from Malaysia look a bit different from the one found in Thailand.

Hoya maingayi was named for Alexander Carroll Maingay (1836-1869), who collected it in 1867. British physician, botanist and botanical collector, he was killed during prison riot. I believe that this Hoya was one that was fairly recently rediscovered as it was not listed in a sale listings prior to 2018.

Finally, after 3 1/2 years since I got my hands on the plant I finally got my flowers. I believe that I was the first in North America to get this one to bloom, but if I am wrong, contact me, and I will make it right.

I was so excited to see those early buds, but within 2 weeks I was crushed when the buds began to turn red (This is almost always a sign that you will lose the buds). It was not long before my suspicions were confirmed when I touched the tiny buds, and they fell off. I moved the plant to another area of the tent and promptly almost forgot about it. Within 3 months of the buds blasting, I was blown away when two additional peduncles formed and this time the buds started growing in earnest. I was extremely careful to barely water the plant this time as I believe that it was the watering that caused me to lose the first buds. This time around the buds actually grew well on both peduncles; I started to gain confidence!

The only person Julie could find that had flowered this plant was a woman named Lina from the Ukraine. I was unable gather much info from her primarily because of the language issue. From what I gathered she flowered it without lights in the early summer, and watered it very little in the winter. I took this as a sign that perhaps this is a plant that needed increasing day length to trigger flowering. I moved it from 12 hours of light to 15 hours. It took a long time, but on one of its rare waterings, I finally found a short hidden peduncle. It just started to bud up!

My plant was growing into a behemoth that finally had to be moved up to an 8″ pot and then I had to engineer a trellis to work with it. What puzzled me was how could I have such a large plant and never been able to spot a peduncle on it. I felt that there must be some missing element like day length that was not allowing it to want to form peduncles and bud up. I finally got so frustrated that I reached out to Julie Kennedy from the UK to see if any of her European connections had been able to flower it and to find out there secret.