Tropicals & Tender Perennials: HOYA AUSTRALIS- a brief history, 1 by markroy68

markroy68 wrote:
HISTORY- Hoya australis was first collected by europeans in 1770, by Banks and Solander, two of the scientists aboard James Cook's ship HMS Endevour, on his first voyage of discovery to the Pacific. The plant material was collected from Cape Grafton near Cairns, Queensland, on the northeastern coast of Australia. The Pacific Island form of the plant was next collected from Tanna by Georg Forster, the Botanical Collector and Draftsman on Cook's second voyage of discovery. Forster assigned it the name Ascelpias volubilis, a name associated with a number of other species, as Taxonomy was in its formative stage.
In 1810 Robert Brown created the genus Hoya. He moved two descriptions from the Genus Ascelepias (Linnaeus) into this new Genus. Hoya carnosa (including the australis material), as the Holotype for the Genus, and Hoya viridiflora. The name Hoya australis was published in 1827, by James Traill, based on the Australian collection of Banks and Solander. Subsequent authors named plants from a number of areas in Australia, and Papuasia which were later combined within Hoya australis by David Liddle and Paul Forster in the 90's. They ultimately published/ republished the complex as five separate sub-species.
The australis complex has spread throughout the world in cultivation, giving rise to numerous cultivars, varieties, and hybrids (as well as many confusing and arbitrary designations). It is now one of the most popular and common species in cultivation, third only perhaps to the Hoya carnosa complex and H. bella.
Recently australis ssp. oramicola has been classified as a "vulnerable" species by the IUCN (international Union for the Conservation of Nature). Also mentioned as of "least concern" (a less endangered species) is ssp. rupicola.
More recently Hoya australis has begun to naturalize in Hawaii. Carol Noel recently found a seedling she has identified as australis ssp. australis growing near the beach which she has collected and introduced to the trade.