I received some Erisotemma section Hoya in the mail today, and started dissecting and photographing them. Here are a few of the pictures. Thanks Carol!
Some Erostemma section Hoya
This is H. ciliata.
This is Hoya 'Ruthie', an Ed Gilding hybrid. The piece between the foremost flowers is the corona, removed from the flower. It looks flat when the flower is whole, but actually stands on a column that is hidden by the petal bases.
These are some pollinaria from Hoya ciliata at 20X magnification.
Here are the names of the plants in the first picture, from left to right:
Hoya sp. "apple green" (it turned red in the shipping box), Hoya ciliata (two loose flowers near the bottom with dark purple/black corollas), Hoya 'Ruthie' (with largest flowers), lower right is Hoya sp. "Sulawesi" AKA sp. "Bada Valley", far right is Hoya 'Black Star', an Ed Gilding hybrid of H. ciliata x H. sussuela (? is that right, Carol?).
Mark: WOW! Really great photo's! You must do photography for a living? Each of those looks like art to me!
Lin
Mark, great photos!!!
Jan
Mark, I love your photos. Great camera. Thanks for showing us.
Aren't they wonderful? I keep coming back and looking at them!
Excellent photos and lovely flowers, Mark. Did you get the plants along with the blooms or just a box full of blooms?
Mel
Lin, thanks. I'm not a professional though, just an amateur photographer.
Mel, it was just the flowers. Carol was kind enough to send them to me so I could photograph them and, more importantly, look at the pollinarium. She even sent the whole peduncle, not just loose flowers! I would never see any Eriostemmas otherwise, its far too cool in Norcal to grow them even inside.
I got some good pictures of the pollinarium with my macro lens- Eriostemmas are some of the few Hoya that have pollinaria big enough to capture this way. This pollinarium is almost 2mm wide, most Hoya have pollinia that are less than 1mm.
The two yellow bundles are the pollen masses, stuck together with a kind of wax. They are connected by the two thin "arms" to the dark brown corpuscle.
This is a 1/2 side view.
This message was edited Jul 5, 2008 10:28 AM
Mark...almost right on the IDs...guess I wasn't too clear:
Top left is sp. Apple Green, then H. 'Ruthie' and then H. 'Optimistic across the top ('Optimistic' recurves when fully open).
Along the bottom is 'Black Star' just below Apple Green, H. ciliata next to it (only 2 single flowers) and then sp. Sulawesi.
Nice photography, Mark!!!
Oh! I thought there were only ciliata as loose flowers- guess I'll have to separate out the photos of that and 'Black Star', and rename the file I made for 'Optomistic'.
Thanks!
Really sorry about misleading you, Mark...I had forgotten about BS.
ooooops.
Not to worry. I thought the 'Black Star' flower looked different than ciliata, but thought it was because it hadn't opened fully.
Am I right that 'Black Star' is H. ciliata x H. sussuela?
Thanks for sharing, Mark (and Carol, of course!).
Wouldn't it be great if you could root the actual peduncles and just have constant blooms with no plant??
I would just love to watch you working in your mad scientist lab, Mark!
Gabi
Hmmmmm. Or is it H. ciliata and H. affinis? Very 'black' hoyas.... gotta look it up.
Love the photos Mark..they are amazing!
nice pics what camera are you useing?
It's a Canon Rebel xti with a Canon 60mm macro lens. I love it!