Here is a real fuzzy handful of Hoya alagensis Flowers. I wish everyone could see it in person as it is much more impressive than experienced through photographs.

Both of these are flowering at the same time so what the heck here they are meeting for the first and probably last time.

Hoya alagensis is endemic to the Alag River, Mindoro Island, Philippines. It is a lowland species that was found at about 150 meters in elevation. It is considered an endangered species. Mindoro Island is the seventh largest in the Philippines, and loss of plant habitat to agriculture is the greatest threat to many of the endemic species.

I thought it would be kind of neat to compare the flowers of the two different H. alagensis clones that I have had the privilege to cultivate. The only differences that I can detect is that the corolla tips are a little narrower on the new clone and the inner corona appears to be more pointed on the newly discovered clone.

Within 4 days of discovering the buds, they opened with the scent of vanilla. The plant is in a six inch pot with the substrate mostly consisting of soft tree fern fiber. It flowered under a very bright LED light that consumes 300 watts of power. Humidity ranged from 70-90% with day length set at 14 hours. The temperatures reached 80 degrees during the day and when the lights were off it could get as low as 58 degrees. It was watered with a weak fertilizer solution approximately every 5 days.

Hoya alagensis not only started to grow well, but soon was growing almost too quickly to keep it in check. It could easily grow 4-6 inches a day, and it began to put on peduncles until I had more than a dozen on the plant, but it never would bud up. I would check it every day and there was never any sign until recently I discovered a set of giant buds nearly ready to open that were hiding in plain site at the soil line.

The big problem with the plant was that the leaves were always chlorotic and yellowish in color which would drive me nuts. It also did not grow well with a pattern that was always stop and start. Finally last year I stopped using reverse osmosis water and started using straight tap water; almost overnight the leaves starting improving, and all new growth started coming nice and dark green.

I received this new clone of Hoya alagensis from Jimmy Myers of North Carolina back in the summer of 2020. The cutting rooted quickly but never grew well for me. Last summer it looked so bad that I almost threw it out. Tomorrow I will tell you what completely turned this plant around.

I hope that I am not speaking to soon here, but for the first-time ever I have a couple of buds on Hoya hamiltoniorum. If this plant manages to bring these buds to term, I will have a lot more to say about this species down the road. The buds are not very impressive, but it is a start on a Hoya that has not really liked me all that much.

This Hoya was down to 2 sickly looking leaves last fall when I treated it with hydrogen peroxide and managed to bring it back to a degree. Now it has 4 leaves, but it is far from thriving. It did however just put on a nice set of buds, and let us hope that it won’t be the last set of flowers that I ever get from this plant. This species does not put on roots easily and that is why I have been loathe to take a cutting and try to restart it.