Hoya stenophylla was found on trees in the forest of the Torricelli Mountains of Northeastern New Guinea at about 800 meters of elevation. Thanks to Mary Carroll for finding this information for me!

I believe that I may be the first person to flower Hoya stenophylla in the U.S. so I am going to lay out my exact conditions for those who want to try to duplicate the feat.

Temperatures at night varied from a low of 59 degrees F to a high of 62 degrees F. The daytime temps varied from a low of 76 F to a high of 80 F. Humidity was always above 75%. The plant received 15 hours of indirect high output LED lighting. By indirect I mean that it did not hang directly under, but just off to the side of a light that was so powerful that it burned holes in the leaves of some of my other Hoyas such as H. icensis.

I even set my alarm and went into the cold dark basement in the middle of the night and this was as far as the flowers ever opened for me:

I was so very excited to come downstairs and examine these buds with a lighted magnifier every day. I think that most of the fun in growing these Hoyas is the anticipation brought on by bud development. This turned out to definitely be the case when the flowers finally opened on this plant. This is one of those Hoyas in which the flower only partially opens during the daylight hours; the corolla never fully extends even at night.

As I examined the slender little vine twirling around another Hoya vine, and climbing ever upward, I noticed something strange. One of the new leaves slowly pushing out seemed strange looking and the closer that I looked at it, I started to realize that it was a newly forming peduncle. I was ecstatic as I never really expected to flower this species as there were almost no photos of this plant online. I followed this peduncle with a magnifying glass for a couple of months as it tried to bud up. The earliest buds would blast but finally with very careful watering two buds held on and began to grow!

Hoya stenophylla came to me in September 2021 as a rooted cutting growing in Pon. I kept it this way for a couple of months, but I kept losing leaves, and I have a very difficult time to tell when to water this substrate. I eventually moved it over to tree fern where I barely watered it, and it seemed a little happier. I misted it every day and did not pay it a lot of attention. One day I noticed that one of its vines had twisted around a Hoya polystachya vine in my tent and was rapidly climbing to the top of the grow tent.

I first flowered this plant back in April, and I’m just getting around to discussing it now as there have been so many new flowering for me in 2022.

This Hoya came to me in a trade made in the early fall of 2021 where I traded a very talented grower and Instagram star from Phoenix a couple of H. thailandica plants for three plants of which Hoya stenophylla was one of them.

I finally have this plant back where it continues to be mysteriously pollinated in the grow tent. See It below in its full glory:

Hoya australis ssp. Oramicola is one of the Hoyas that lives quite happily on a window sill upstairs. I use a tiny t-5 strip light to supplement its meager light supply as the window has a large overhang that shields it from all sun.

It will take a long time to get this one untangled out of the tent where it has wrapped itself around almost everything. It is now flowering on two different peduncles.