decide you had to grow them?
I remember years and years ago, when I was still in college, we used to go pretty regularly to a cheap neighborhood movie theater...next to the movie theater was a dry cleaner, and in the dry cleaner's window hung two enormous hoya carnosas...they were in 10" pots and hung down at least 3'....the leaves were yellow from too much light and they looked generally tatty and uncared for, but all summer they were covered with dozens and dozens of clusters of gorgeous pale pink star shaped flowers....every time we went to the movies I'd stare at those hoyas and wish they were mine...I didn't get a hoya myself for many more years because at that time the available literature said you had to have hoyas forever (minimum 5-10 years) before they would bloom and that getting just the right amount of light could be a problem---too much you'd burn the leaves and damage the plant, too little and you'd never get those blooms...I eventually ended up blooming an h. pubicalyx (scotch taped around the edges of my bedroom window) and was hooked from then on...
What about the rest of you guys? Any memories you'd like to share?
SR
when did you see your first blooming hoya and...
Flowers were not the reason I initially became interested in Hoya. The foliage is what drew me. Like you, I saw a large potted H. carnosa (what I now know to be 'Krimson Princess') and HAD to have one. The one I saw didn't have any blooms. It was three years before mine bloomed, but by that time I had gotten a pubicalyx. Then I found Dave's.... and Carol.... and the rest is history!
Barb
HAHA....it was H. australis!!! about 6 years ago! 20 years ago I had a MONSTER H. carnosa hanging from my cathedral ceiling in Seattle but it bloomed so seldom I was underwhelmed...but always intrigued!!!
Still think H. australis is grand!
Carol
I fell in love with the foliage - I didn't even know they bloomed at first. I basically started collecting hoyas a few years after I got my first carnosa KQ - I found it at a supermarket and loved the waxy texture. When I got the plant, I had no clue what it was or what a hoya was, and I never knew it bloomed until I decided to search online to find out the name (because I wanted another) - that's when I realized it was a "hoya" and that it BLOOMS! So I looked into hoyas and found out there were hundreds of species. That was the beginning of my obsession.
Gabi
I bought three 2 1/2 inch pots of what Home Depot had labeled as Hoya rubra. I also, like many of you, bought them because I liked the foliage, and had no idea that they bloomed. Five years later it bloomed, and a friend gave me cuttings of H. multiflora, H. cummingiana, H. Iris Marie, and H. bella, and an addiction was born. Although it was not really fueled until I found this website and all the resources that it presented.
Doug
My sister had a KQ and a hindu rope - I was in love! Never saw a flower until about a year later and it was on nummaraloids. I was hooked, then. And, like Barb, once I found DG and Carol, my checkbook has never been the same!!
I worked with an elderly man back in the mid 70's. He and his wife were in their 80's back then, she was retired but he still enjoyed working part time. They lived in a tiny little house with a tiny little yard, but it was like a tropical paradise! They knew I was interested in plants so one day he came to work with a small potted wax plant (which I think someone ID'd as K. Queen.) I had no idea they bloomed until a number of years later when all of a sudden I saw the lovely flower. I still have this plant and think of my old friends every time it blooms! They gave me a cutting of an Epiphyllum hookerii also which I still have. They both loved gardening and baking and I not only have a couple of plants to remember them by but also a couple of cookie recipe's that are favorites!
Anyway ... I must admit, I didn't really "decide" to grow hoyas, didn't get interested in them until joining DG - I had no idea there were so many out there and that some were fragrant! I don't have very many right now, but can see how easy it is to become addicted to these beautiful plants! I am amazed at the number in some of y'alls collections! I can easily imagine having a House of Hoyas!
My first hoya came from a cutting from my mother's plant more than 30 years ago. She had that plant at least 20 years at that time. About 15 years later I was in a garden centre and saw two plants that looked strangely like hoyas, but they were variegated, and so I bought what were later identified as Krimson Princess and Krimson Queen. Later that same summer I found a plant called a Hindu Rope Hoya. I've always been a houseplant grower and had picked up a few books along the way and so I knew that there were five different types of hoya and I was well on my way to having them all! Problem was, I couldn't match the descriptions in the book with the four plants that I had. A few years later I was in another garden centre and found what I believed to be hoya bella, but for $35. A nice young man let me have a cutting for free. This turned out to be hoya dwarf carnosa 'holliana'. That was about 10 years ago, and I was living happily in ignorance until we bought our house 7 years ago, and within a year I got into outside gardening. Wanting to get more info on the perennials I was buying I started searching for info on the internet. I kept getting directed to some weird site called Dave's Garden, so I bit, and bought a cheap subscription. Within a week I decided to look and see if there was any info on hoyas. The first picture it showed me was hoya multiflora and as my eyes bugged out, I gasped and said "Oh My God, that's a hoya"?. I think I even started hyperventilating ... lol... An addiction was born. I now have 120 different hoyas and have no plans to curb my enthusiasm.
Christine
about 4 years ago, I was going through some old books that belonged to my grandmother. I found this book on houseplants and cracked it open. I had a fair collection of little plants, and I was just looking for info on how to keep the ones I had alive. this book (prolly from the early 80's) had a few pages of hoya pictures, some with and some without flowers. there was one picture of a single variegated rope vine growing out of a bonsai pot with a single flower on it.
I decided I wanted to find some hoyas
a few months later, I happened upon 4" pots of KQ, KP, and a solid rope in one of those displays from EA. I snapped them up. I still have the KP and one lone vine of rope. This vine loves his little home and has sprouted new leaves up near the top.
This message was edited Feb 8, 2008 6:17 PM
When I was a child, I loved plants ( a love fostered by the very first leaf of African Violet that my grandmother gave me and it miraculously sprouted into this magnificent little flowering plant). And every year we would travel down to Florida in the summer to visit my uncle. Here he had all sorts of amazing plants and books on plants, which is where most of my little bit of knowledge came from. Anyway he had this book on unusual and interesting plants. In the very back of the book, in the advanced grower section, was a picture of Hoya carnosa KQ and her blooms. I was fascinated by this plant. I wanted one so badly. And so my uncle and I spent the remainder of the week traveling around the area visiting nurseries looking for one ( I now know that the nursery trips were for him as much as me ;) !!!) To my alas we did not find one. I did not get my first hoya until years later when I was looking online for geraniums and a website I stumbled upon had four different types of hoya. I instantly ordered three Krimson Queens. A year later I stumbled upon Dave's Garden while trying to learn how to make compost. I found the hoya forum... and my love/addiction for hoyas has exploded!!! I still haven't seen those gorgeous Krimson Queen blooms in person yet though. Still hoping and waiting!
Duncan...put that carnosa in a darker situation....and cool if you can. They love that...and DRY.
Yes, I have three separate plants of the carnosa. One is kept in a dark spot, and two are kept hanging in the sunny window because I love that beautiful red foliage they develop in high light. I think mine just have to get big enough to bloom. I wish they would hurry up though!!!! :D