Tropicals & Tender Perennials: something I've always wondered..., 0 by markroy68

markroy68 wrote:
Hoya compacta is a valid name, and this plant does have a differently structured corona from the plant we call Hoya carnosa. You can see it in the picture above, and also there is an excellent drawing comparing the two in The Hoyan V.4:51. They really are different in corona detail- but not dramatically so in overall aspect, except for the leaves. Both have smallish, flat, fuzzy pink flowers with a bit of red on the corona. They smell pretty much the same too.
I did photograph a plant of H. 'Krinkle-8' recently- this has been determined to be a form of H. compacta by David Liddle, but the corona looks a lot more like that of our Hoya carnosa to me, so I don't know about that. (The flowers came from a nursery and had to ride all day in my truck- so excuse the dust, debris and cat hairs.)
The whole thing is mysterious- I don't believe anyone has ever documented a plant looking like compacta in nature, and I have never seen or heard of an older herbarium sheet that matches the leaves. I think the only one that matches is the one CB deposited (or referred to, it may have been deposited by DK) when she published it.
My guess would be that compacta is a very similar species to carnosa, and in nature has leaves that look very similar to carnosa's. I would guess that the weird mutation came about in the Cobia nursery, where they seemed to be constantly producing new forms of variegation. They must have been exposing seed to radiation or something.
It is suspicious- they had four or five distinct forms of variegation in H. carnosa, and they had exactly the same forms of variegation also in compacta, which would suggest that they are physically somehow related.
Eventually someone will genetically test all of the plants we have that look like carnosa, and then we may get some concrete answers.