The same day I took this Hoya flower comparison photo, I threw out the imperialis plant that produced the flower. It was the worst H. imperialis plant that I had ever grown, and I believed that it flowered as an act of desperation to try to save itself before dying; it did not work!

I had always believed that the flowers of Hoya vangviengiensis and H. carnosa were about the same size, but here you can clearly see that H. vangviengiensis are significantly bigger.

It is kind of hard to believe that for five years I tried everything in the book to get H. vangviengiensis to flower and now it flowered twice over the summer. Maybe this one just needs to get to a certain age to bloom?

I caught this photo of the un-reflexed blooms of Hoya cf. palawanica back in July, but just found the time to post it here. These flowers were produced in the summer greenhouse.

Hoya vitiensis Yellow is quite a striking plant and I would have appreciated it far more if I hadn’t been so disappointed that it was not the Hoya desvoeuxensis. It is a lovely plant that will give you all of the challenge that you are looking for in blooming a Hoya. It is definitely worth adding to the collection especially if you don’t have the mauve colored clone.

Here is a photo of two of my three plants, some of which will soon be chopped up and sold as cuttings, as I don’t need that many Hoya vitiensis plants!

Here are the flowers for the two clones of Hoya vitiensis:

I have grown and flowered with quite a lot of difficulty the regular mauve form of Hoya vitiensis. I vaguely was aware that there was a yellow clone out there, but it was not really on my radar. This plant turned out to be every bit as challenging to flower as the mauve version out there taking me at least 3 years to figure out.

I am not revealing my source for the plant that I received as Hoya desvoeuxensis as it was not their fault. Since this plant is so hard to flower, and the leaves are identical to Hoya desvoeuxensis and other Hoyas as well, there was no way to tell what this plant was until it flowered. Here is the problem with a bad ID, not only did my friend not have the plant she thought she had, but the person she got the plant from may not even have been the one who made the initial mistake. Also, unfortunately I sold at least a dozen rooted cuttings of what I thought was H. desvoeuxensis so whoever bought those plants from me also does not have the plant they thought they had. It is also possible that they also may have passed it on. I did say when I sold the plant that I had never flowered it before so I guess there was not an ironclad guarantee that it was what I said it was, but it is very unfortunate all the way around!

I expected the buds on the plant to open in about 2 weeks after observing their size the day before so imagine my disappointment the next morning when I opened the tent. The buds on one plant had opened and I was shocked to find some yellow flowers with a reddish corona and not the very large pink bell-shaped flowers that I expected from Hoya desvoeuxensis. It did not take too long to ID the Hoya and it was a new one to me, but not the plant that I had wished for all of these years.