Hoya hamiltoniorum is another one of those Hoyas that I just thought would never do well in ambient household conditions. Well, here we are and the plant has not only done well, but it is now covered with buds and will soon flower. We now also know for sure that this is another Hoya that only wants to flower when the day length is decreasing.

I’ve only been growing Hoya surisana now for about 4 or 5 months so I don’t have that much to say about its likes and dislikes. I don’t believe at this point that it is a Hoya that I can recommend to beginners and casual collectors, but for serious collectors it is probably a must have. Its very unusual flowers with extra long calyx lobes, makes it worth seeking out. I will report back when I have more experience with its cultivation and subsequent flowerings.

Here is my last comparison photo using Hoya surisana for now. I should take this opportunity to say that the flowers had no detectable scent and only lasted a couple of days before falling off.

I’m afraid that in a beauty contest Hoya desvoeuxensis puts Hoya surisana to shame!

Both of these were flowering at the same time; so why not?

Here is a comparison photo of Hoya surisana and Hoya undulata:

Here is another unaltered photo of the blooms from Hoya surisana. I will tell you that cleaning these photos up digitally takes a lot of work and hundreds of clicks with the mouse. Notice all of the brown debris all around the edges of the corolla, and this was actually after trying to clean it off with a water sprayer!

Finally towards the end of September the buds actually began opening. It took a three days for the flowers all to fully open. What was slightly disappointing was the flowers are heavy nectar drippers, and this fact coupled with the extraordinary height of the corona causes all of the flowers to be discolored with reddish debris. The only way to make the flowers look really nice is to use something like Photoshop to remove all of the discoloration. I never have seen Hoya flowers with this issue before. So all of these perfect flower photos of this plant that you have seen online have been cleaned up digitally to look great. Below you can see the cleaned up photo on top and the original on the bottom.

I was excited to see what I thought was the buds opening one morning only to realize that what I thought was the corolla opening was actually the calyx.

I started to get more confident with this Hoya after the new leaves began greening up. After having the plant for about 3 months, I was astounded to find a developing peduncle, which shortly after began to bud up. I never thought it would make it to term as these campanulate flowered Hoyas have a real tendency to blast buds especially when the plant is young. I absolutely loved the look of these developing buds!