This is like one of my most favorite hoyas as far as leaves go. They are extremely stiff like cardboard. I'm not sure if the name is correct, but it came labeled as Meredithii IPPS 3576. Whatever it is, I like it.
Agape,
Awanda
Love the leaves on this one:-)
Awanda...it looks to me like what you have is one of the two clones of H. callistophylla (there is another which has a shorter, fatter leaf...just slightly differently arranged venation)...and it is one of my faves too!!! H. meredithii is the invalid name (syn.) of H. vitellinoides and the IPPS # means it came from Paul Shirley.
Love it!!!
I think I have this one too, but it was sold to me as finlaysonii nova...are they one and the same?
Raven
Here is one clone of H. callistophylla...the photograph is by David Liddle.
Here is the other clone of the type. This photograph and the information was made by the kind courtesy of Chris Burton and sent to me.
So are the fin. nova and the callistophylla clone the same plant? Do you think I should change the name of mine to callistophylla?
Raven
This is a different hoya and its leaves look almost like the one Carol posted, can anyone else see it or is it just my wishful thinking:-).
Blessings,
Awanda
Sorry, my picture of the second H. callistophylla didn't come out...had to reduce the size....so here it is. I look at the margins of the leaf..and how the patterns ends at the margins...Awanda...I don't think your second one has any solid color on the margins, does it?
Raven...you still may have that H. aff. finlaysonii (they have found it is NOT H. finlaysonii..."they" being David Liddle)...can you post a picture of the venation? I will try to set up a photo of all of my veined leaves....the differences are there, just very subtle.
Awanda...did yours come with a number? Or from a nursery?
Carol both of mine came from Hanne with the same number (IPPS 3576), but they look different to me.
Blessings,
Awanda
Yup...they ARE different.
Who/What is Hanne?
For years I thought that I had H. finlaysonii....and it turned out I had a cultivar. Darn, I hate it when it does that. This has happened more than once!!! There are so many seedlings of unknown parentage running around as something exotic...it boggles the mind. It isn't critical to have correct labeling, unless you get tired of paying for a species and find you are send the same one you have been sent 10 times!
This is supposed to be a hobby...it is supposed to relieve stress and create joy! I envy being able to do that!!! I am less OCP than I used to be, and don't need to change the world...just my own labels!!
LOL...Aloha,
Carol
Wow, those are so neat! I've never seen a hoya like that before here. Coool!
:) Donna
Agreed Donna! Positively DROOL cool!!!!! I love Hoyas with those incredible leaves....what do the flowers look like? They are so pretty they almost don't eve need flowers! Thanks for sharing your beauties Awanda & Carol! You give the rest of us 'Hoya covet' disease!
Karen
Carol and all, I am struggling with my Hoya this year, I don't seem to have the energy that I used to have, and it happened just after my last birthday. Must run, off to the Huntington to see my babies tomorrow, they are doing well there, I'm so glad I brought them there for the winter.
The new Tropical house isn't opened yet, so I can't ask you to come and see my Hoya hanging there. Our big giant black stinky corspe plant is doing well, and so are all the little stinkers.
I've now started a collection of Rhipsalis, but when the rest of my Hoya come out of their greenhouse the Rhipsalis will go in and the Hoya will get the choice spot for the summer months.
I want to thank you for all the pictures, I'm glad I checked in, and got to see them.
I hope I will have something interesting to show you this summer. Hoyakins.
Oooooh I found another drooler! I luv the look of the leaves.
:) Donna
Okay, I'm REALLY confused now. I bought this plant last year and it was sold to me as H. vitellinoides...is this correct or not (I've not seen an blooms yet)
This whole naming/ID'ing thing with the hoyas is driving me BONKERS! Seems like every time I turn around, I'm reading a post here where someone thought it was nameX only to learn it's really nameY. Why is it so difficult?! Are there that many that look so much alike or is it a case of what Carol said ... "..so many seedlings of unknown parentage running around "? I'm serious...can someone please "....'SPLAIN IT TO ME, LUCY".
Betsy
Suz...well, from what I know, it is not H. vitellinoides (aka H. meredithii). What it IS, I can't say, but it looks like it could be the one they callED H. finlaysonii 'nova' which is a lovely leaf in the H. finlaysonii 'group' but unidentified. I call mine H. aff finlaysonii
Betsy...you ask a darn good question!!! It is easy and difficult to answer....shall I try? Can I go get my soap box?
There are many genuses of plants (perhaps all) with names in a muddle... In my limited years of collecting hoyas, and with a limited budget, I soon learned that, in trades, I was receiving Hoya X and Hoya Y and they both looked alike. These were trades...no big deal. Then I received trades that said Hoya X from Dealer X and Hoya Y from Dealer Y and...again, they were the same. Drats! This would not work!!
I began to learn. I began to question. Without going into the gory details, here are some of the reasons the names are all in a muddle:
People trading, in all good faith, misspell the name, forget the 'aff' before the name, forget the name so they make one up, and they leave off the IPPS# or the IML# that accomanied the name in the first place. It is VERY important, if you are going to sell or trade, that the source of the hoya accompany the name.
Dealers selling hoyas (some, not all) stick any name on they think makes sense, or sounds good, or will make money or.... Their business is selling plants, not the correctness of the IDs.
Tags are lost, switched my mistake and a plant comes up with the wrong name. This happens!!! My cats decided that the white tags were fun to play with (a couple of years ago) and I came in one morning and no pots had tags. Bummer!!! BIG Bummmer.
A dealer gets an order but only has 3 out of the 4 in stock....eh, a slip of honesty?
Collectors (yes, the BIG guys) find a hoya in the wild and decide to publish it with the name X. They don't do their homework to find that this hoya has already been published as H. Y. By this time, they have distributed the plant so it now has 2 names...(the older one has precedence by the way) and John/Joan Q Public doesn't know any of this so they pass it around under the new name. There is a lot of vanity, preteige, ego, etc. involved in publishing a new species...some are simply ruthless.
Authors, like A.B. Graf publishes a book. He calls it Tropica, or Exotica or something like that. He has lovely pictures of a gazillion genera, species and cultivars...and he gets the names from .... yes....Dealers. Not the scientific community. So Tropica, for instance, is FULL of mislabeled plants.
HOW TO AVOID THESE PITFALLS? Well...it is almost impossible! Research a grower thru the forum-judge them not on their prices but on the reliability of their identifications...their interest in having the correct ID. Once you have a plant with the right ID, don't sell it or trade it until it has bloomed and you have verified that it IS that species. Don't play Barbie and think "Oh, this is too complicated...I'll just label it with the label I got and say it is their fault if it is wrong". Having a personal collection with the wrong labels is one thing, but once to start trading or selling...(I feel) you have a moral obligation to be as correct as you possibly can be.
I can tell you with 100% honesty that I have thought my sources for hoya to be impecable...yet I find I have received wrongly labeled plants. Plants are sold by humans....humans can make honest errors. I swore, at one point, I would never sell a plant I hadn't bloomed to verify the id. I am back there, once again, as I have been bit in the asp by selling a plant, wrongly labeled because I assumed it was correct.
Well...my soap box is breaking down...so Ill get off it now. This is simply my 2 cents.... I feel very passionately about this issue (can you tell?) and sometimes really irk people but...I don't think of myself as a botanical nazi...just another traveler seeking truth.
:>)))
I like that Carol...the "botanical nazi" (lol). Kind of like Seinfeld's soup nazi (only cuter).
CAROL
THANK YOU for taking the time to 'splain it to me! As muddled as the whole issue is, what you've said DOES make sense and helps me understand. In fact, being a 'newbie', I've already learned how innocently one can add to the confusion: JerodsMom sent me a hoya & I thought the tag said "Jungle Goodie" and labeled it as such. Luckily, I asked her to verify and after a good chuckle, she told me it was "Jungle GARDEN". ha ha
So, thank you for bringing light to an important issue & taking the time to explain this.
This message was edited Oct 26, 2005 7:14 AM
Hi!
I have a Hoya vittelinoides IML 358 and leafs are very very big. Look at the picture and you'll se my hand holding the leaf (I have big hands).
You'll know that it's a vittelinoides by its very large wavy leafs.
All the best,
Katja
Thanks, Carol! Your dedication is appreciated and you make some very good points. Thanks, especially, for taking the time to explain this to this newbie!
Thank you Carol taking the time to explain this to us all.
And thank you for ID'ing my plant. I must admit I still love it even it isn't a H. vitellinoids, but I will rethink buying again from the person who sold it to me.
Sue
Thanks for explaining it all so well Carol. I'm glad I have this information now when I'm just starting out with hoyas so that I can try to label mine properly and not add to the problem when they get big enough for me to start trading.
Sandy
Carol great information. Which forum(s) are you referring to regarding researching all hoya sellers; that would be a great feature. With it being so MANY sellers out there, what would you recommed to do as far as checking out which sellers are selling correctly named hoyas? If we don't even know if it's named correctly, how we would know if the seller is correct? It just seems like when you think you have a correctly named hoyas, someone comes along and says something different. "As the Hoya Turns" will continue:-).
Blessings,
Awanda
Good question, Awanda. When I said 'check the forums', I meant that if you see a hoya called hoyaX in a catalogue...look at some of the websites that ID hoyas (Milan has put some good links on the sticky threads) and compare what you are looking at buying (and/or the description) with what others say. Majority rules usually. Post a question here...perhaps someone will give an opinion on the liklihood that your hoya will be the correct one. It is very hard trading...perhaps ask for a picture? Ask that person where they got the hoya...("Chain of Custody" often has good clues). I have bought from Botanova and most seem correctly labeled... There are some dealers in the US I would buy hoyas from unless I saw what they were sending...who are famous for mislabeled plants.
Blooming out a plant and doing homework is really the ONLY way to be more than 50% sure. I am currently in a muddle with a couple of my hoyas I got from David Liddle...they don't turn out to be what I (myself, when I was there in OZ labeling the cuts) labeled them as. My mistake? Theirs? A change since my visit? All three? hard to know. But I DO know that
I WILL NOT OFFER A PLANT EVEN ON A TRADE WITHOUT BLOOMING IT OUT unless the identity is pretty obvious....like H. pauciflora, H. obscura etc. I have been nurturing a plant to bloom now for 2 years...H. purpurea. I was giddy with the umbels about to bloom on the plant...and it bloomed H. australis ssp. australis. HUH? How did that happen? Where is H. purpurea? Beats me.
When a plant is 'published'...i.e. given a name...a sample of THAT plants' leaves and flowers are pressed and included with the publication as the Holotype. David Liddle often says "The only correctly labeled plant is the Holotype, all others are man's interpretation of it".
For me...part of the intrigue of Hoya is the fact that they are shrouded with mystery. I enjoy the 'chase'. most of the time. If I ask David to help me with an ID, he will ask me first "where was it found" (called, collection data)...the journals kept on hoyas should contain all of that information...I know that anything I get that says "....from XXXYYYZZZ" I know is incorrectly labeled from the gitgo.
Some hoyas have been id'd so often on this forum, it is a piece of cake!!! The carnosas, pubicalyx, kentiana/weyettii ...nearly all the EA plants...some are a bit more difficult to ID. Christina has wonderful pictures on her website! The photos on my Photo Compendium were put there so that people could compare their flowers to ones of correct ID. I know those are correct (to the best of my ability...never can say 100% sure... :>). All of the links Milan has posted....
My podium time is up.... TTFN!!
Carol
I must repeat again how HAPPYI am to have had Awanda and Carol guide me to this forum!
The information that the experts and experienced "novices" provide is so informative - in some ways the disagreements on the correct names of the plants are the most useful because I can see exactly how each person has come to know that their plant is the correctly named one. I can ask what I think might be a really stupid question, and it is happily answered by many (or responded to with an "I didn't know/understand that either, but I want to"). The kindness of those who answer the technical questions is really gratifying - there are no knowledge snobs here.
And, I love how people on this forum are open to saying they had been incorrect. What a great thing it is to be around people who can be open to the fact that they are not perfect and not always right.
Also the camaraderie on this forum is so uplifting. I am happy to be a part of a subculture of people who don't mind if a thread gets hijacked for a little giggling fit, because it makes each member that much more human to me. I also appreciate how much everyone here shares with each other (whether it be money and plants to those whose lives have been upended by a natural disaster, or a nice package of cuttings just for the heck of it). It shows me that we all take our collecting seriously, but that we can be kind and friendly to one another.
So, thank you all for providing me such a wealth of information, and such a wealth of friendship!! You all ROCK!
Now, back to the regularly scheduled program of plant identification, beautiful blooms, and huge leaves (with some fits of laughter in between)...
Ann
......and on behalf of the listening audience, you, Ann, are one of the funnest people on the forum... I always have to giggle when you post as I say to myself "Right. Doctoral Candidate, hmmmmm". lol Carol
Snicker & Snort you can see why I get into so much trouble with my more "staid" and studious colleagues...
Just one more reason why I come screaming every day to this forum (it has real people on it).
I'll second that one!! Awesome people here. I reallly can't wait to meet some of them in person. Including you Ann, or course Carol. Heck, I want to meet all of you!!!!
Heather
Ditto, Heather!
Ann