H pachyclada
very sweet fragrance
May Flowers
Hoya sp. aff. pubifera
sweet and sappy in the morning
Hmmmm, Sunshine...very curious!!!!
My shepherdii is blooming for the first time, Awesome fragrance! My sister and her husband drove up from South Florida to spend a few days with us. The first time they've been here in probably 20 years! They do not like to travel. My sister has a couple of house plants but isn't really into gardening or house plants to the extent that I am. She was walking around asking me about a bunch of different plants. She didn't know what a Hoya was, said she had never heard of them, but when I said some folks know them as "Wax Plants" she said Aha, I have heard of that but just never knew what they looked like and that there were so many!
We had friends over and cooked steaks on the grill yesterday afternoon. Then in the evening, we were all sitting on the deck by the pool and everyone was asking what the great fragrance was they were smelling ... not the steaks that had been cooked on the grill but the flowers they were smelling. Someone asked if it was Honeysuckle and someone else said maybe jasmine? I told them it was a couple of different Hoya's so we walked around so they could smell each different flower. Hoya's lacunosa, wayettii, ds-70, brevialata, and the shepherdii as well as Gardenia fragrance was filling the air from my two large bushes in the yard. My sister Loved the H. lacunosa fragrance so I gave her a big basket that was blooming, along with a small compacta, a good sized hanging basket of blooming H. wayettii, another large basket of australis and a bag full of gardenia blooms! She was a happy person when they drove off! My brother in law just laughed and said, we came here with only 3 bags and we are going home with 10!
Unfortunately we have had non stop rain for the past 7 or 8 days here ... major flooding in some parts of the city to the tune of $52 million dollars in damage! Luckily our house is on a high lot and we aren't in a flood zone so didn't have any problems. Our swimming pool was overflowing for two or three days. Last estimate I heard we had 23" of rain! I had brought all the hoyas and a few other things up under the covered deck earlier in the week because I didn't want them to rot. I have a lot of other pretty soggy plants but finally, finally I see the sun! ^_^ Now, maybe things can dry out! Here we were in a bad drought situation for so many months, with fire watches daily and praying for rain ... well, we sure got it! Our Tropical Storm & Hurricane season begins June 1st so I hope we dry out before any more storms hit. We usually don't get hurricanes until late in the season during August & September so hopefully we will be okay for awhile!
Also ... wishing everyone Peace & Blessings on this Memorial Day Weekend!
Lin,
23 inches of rain in the last 7-8 days! ?!? That's crazy! Glad you're not at risk!
Also glad to hear you're getting other's hooked on hoyas and other blooming plants!
Kelly
This message was edited May 25, 2009 9:48 AM
Kelly, yes we've had so much rain this week! They declared an emergency for this area day before yesterday, some people have a foot or more of water inside their homes. They even opened Red Cross Shelters for those who needed it and one filled up so quickly they had to turn people away and send them to other shelters. Last I heard there was $52 million in damages in this county. Thank goodness today was sunny for awhile and dry. Friends of ours who live about a mile away had their yard looking like waterfront property. The back yard and front yard. Their house is on a raised foundation so luckily water didn't breach the house, just the garage. It got cloudy again late this afternoon but thankfully we haven't had any rain today. The forecast shows rain all week but I'm hoping the weather reports are incorrect. Many people who were affected by water in their homes had no insurance.
I talked to my sister after they got home and she is so tickled about the Hoya's I gave her!
Here's a first for me - H. pottsii "Coopers Creek".
It's not the greatest - it just opened tonight, so it's taken
with just the regular camera lens. Take better in the
morning when the sun comes out !
Smells sorta like pistachio, a little sharper though ?
Hard to describe....
Paula, that's a great bloom photo, very sharp! I can see a bit of that pretty pottsii foliage peeking out too! H. pottsii is one on my wish list, just for the foliage but that bloom is really pretty too.
This is H. acuta (pink form) from Borneo...at least 5 blooms on the plant...all at the top of the hoop. I wonder what that means?
Another bloom on the archboldiana X onychoides cross. HUGE flowers.
And H. rigida again...actually another plant. These are all blooming now for a couple of months. Also blooming are H. cinnimomifolia, H. archboldiana, doliocosparte and arnottiana won't stop!!!
Tiny little H. revoluta...
Carol,
Love the color of the H. acuta! Any scent to match? Looks like it would smell like cotton candy.
H. revoluta is a cutie too!
Joni
The acuta does smell VERY sweet...yes...like cotton candy.
I don't know if you all can see this, as this is a way busy photo. But its the best I could do under the circumstances. This is my hoya loherri which is covered in blooms. It hangs in a Bauhinia tree and has sent runners all up in the tree, but there are a ton of blooms at eye level too. They are just so tiny! Hard to get a pic of
here's a close up of an individual cluster of flowers
WOW!! beautiful!!
Can I come and live in your greenhouse?
Sure, if you can put up with marauding squirrels and snakes, LOL
^_^
I love it...uncontrolled chaos! My type of growing!
I rest my case/dilemma for installing a greenhouse...never gonna happen with our snake population and my fear of them:
I will continue to accomodate my collection on my screened lanai as long as I have a path to the pool.
Thanks gothqueen!
Joni
The snakes are extremely beneficial, Joni.
They keep any rodents in check. They did (I believe) eat the baby squirrel nestlings the past 2 years, so the only squirrel in there is the mama who won't leave. I am considering a means of eradicating her, have been thinking about it for a while.
But the snakes eat moles when they surface, keep the green tree frog population that hatch in the bromeliads in check, and keep mice and rats out of the GH. They are harmless and I like them. Sometimes I look up and find one hanging out on a ledge watching me.
OMGoodness hanging out watching you!?
I am trying to get used to the idea of snakes living with me...I'm a lot better than I used to be.
Just not even close to the thought of keeping company with one...I know they are beneficial so I don't harm them but the terror still exists.
I had the majority of my property cleared due to the knowlege of pygmy rattlers living in the palmettos and concerned about the safety of my dog and myself.
Aha, a greenhouse! I was going to ask how your Hoya's survived the cold of Gainesville winters. How big is that Bauhinia tree? Do you have to prune it occasionally to keep it in check? H. loherii has such a cute bloom! Love that first photo too, a beautiful chaos of plants! I see Orchids, Epiphyllum's, and is that a Cordyline I see peeking through?
Gothqueen has my kind of jungle except for the snakes. I would love to have a tropical jungle again, but without the snakes! Twenty five years ago I had a huge greenhouse and it scared the beejeebies out of me when I would see a snake, especially if it had bands of bright colors. Until I learned the difference, it always worried me that it was the deadly coral snake, which gets confused a lot with the scarlet king snake. I'm out in the yard a lot and when I see a snake I run the other way! I won't kill a snake unless I know it's a poisonous one. It bothers me when I see one going after a birds nest for the eggs or babies and the adult birds are screeching and going crazy but I guess that's nature. I've been known to run around the yard flailing my arms and yelling at Hawks and Swallow Tail Kites that go after baby birds but snakes are another thing ... I don't want to be near them! A year ago we killed a couple of coral snakes, I was worried they would find a way into the screened pool area and get the cats. When my neighbors were unboarding their windows after the 2004 hurricanes they found 2 pygmy rattler's behind the boards on their bay window! They killed one but the other got away into the shrubbery. I see black snakes and garter snakes around at times and they run the other way ... and I run inside! My husband keeps telling me at least the coral snakes are not a striking type snake, they just get ahold of you and chew and keep injecting the venom. Yuck! I guess rattle snakes give you some warning before they strike if you hear the rattle. We also have something called legless lizards .... ick, they look like snakes, slither like snakes ... so to me they are snakes! I thought my husband was just teasing me when he told me they are lizards, he had to pull up a picture on the internet to convince me. I saw one in a flower bed yesterday and I went the opposite direction!
Uhhh .. enough about slithery, creepy critters. I found H. brevialata (I think) blooming yesterday. This is an EA plant I bought in 2006 and it wasn't labeled correctly but I think someone on here told me it is brevialata?
Hawaii? No snakes!!!
In my next life I hope to live in Hawaii, I've only seen pictures and video ... it looks like Paradise on earth!
Hi Plantlady, yes I have a greenhouse! Gainesville winters are not really all that cold in the long run. The average temp at night for the very short winter season is in the 40's, but as we all know, the average doesn't take into real consideration those one nighters in the 20's and low to mid 30's. Most days here in winter are 60-70. There are always a few days where the high is 45-55 but that's not every day for 2-3 months!
If it weren;t for the cold fronts that blow through we would be just like central FL. Actually when the zone maps were re-written they put Gainesville into 9A. But I still garden like 8B.
Beautiful flowers & photos!!
Cinnamomifolia still going strong.
Cummingiana has about 30 flowers/peduncles. Smells very spicy.
Wow Carol, I love the color of the pink Acuta, very pretty. I have a green form, but no flowas .......yet.
Blessings,
Awanda
I too love the pink acuta! My acuta with white blooms from the DL co-op last year ended up being amoena! It had whitish blooms if I remember correctly and they smelled great. I think I need a pink acuta!
Sunshine: cinnamomifolia is really nice, I love the color on that one! I have a decent sized cummingiana but it hasn't bloomed for me yet ... hopefully someday I will get blooms!
H. erythrina. You gotta love this one for it's leaves because the flowers are nice but the umbel small and, for me, no fragrance.
And here is H. cv. Joy. I love the blossoms.
I'm loving the color of the bloom on erythrina and cv. joy is delicate looking and so pretty!
Thanks Lin!
I love that CV Joy, so pretty!!!
Here's a tsangii (bought as odetteae IML 0934) in full bloom with 16 umbels in various stages...
/Christina
Christina...your H. tsangii is beautiful!!! I am really glad to see you back with us!!!
Love the little blooms on your tsangii ... really pretty!
There's a greenhouse/distributor out of Central Florida who used to always sell ds-70 with the label of tsangii, I sure wish it was actually tsangii, I like the looks of that one!
I like the flower on this one but the scent is unpleasant.
