Cindy, I don't believe that your plant is H. pachyclada. I believe that H. pachyclada has white flowers. Your plant has H. pachy in it, but it's not the straight species. Christine Burton wrote an article on the confusion in identifying H. pachyclada and the very similar, Hoya subquintuplinervis, in one of her PS - The Hoyan articles. Here is a quote from the article: "Question 2: But, doesnÂt Hoya subquintuplinervis have flowers that are red in the center, or is it Hoya pachyclada that has the red in the center? --- The same people who asked Question #1. Answer: Neither of them have red in the center. To the naked eye, the flowers of both look almost identical, but under the lens of a microscope, they are very different. The only similar hoya with red in the center of the flower with which I am familiar is a Michael Miyoshira hybrid, which he said was a cross of Hoya pachyclada X Hoya sp. Bangkok #4. I believe that it was actually a cross of Hoya subquintuplinervis X Hoya sp. Bangkok #4. I say that because of the shape of the leaves and the fact that everyone, at the time Michael made that cross, thought that Hoya subquintuplinervis was Hoya pachyclada." I have been waiting for my H. pachyclada to bloom so I will know if I have the plant labeled correctly or not. I have the entire article linked below, for anyone that's interested. Stunning photo, BTW! I kind of hope my plant has the red in the flowers because it's beautiful. Mike Here is a link that might be useful: Hoya article

I love absolutely love all of the hoya blooms, but the one that draws my eye back to it, every single time is the Pubicalyx 'chimera'. I absolutely Must get that one! LoL Can anyone explain the scent of this one? Pretty please? =) Also, anyone want to describe the scent of Hoya nummularioides? My DD and I both love the scent of this one but according to my DH, my MIL has a reaction to it. I wasn't here when she came to the home to help with the wood flooring install. So I didn't see the reaction. I know for a fact the crazy woman believes my plants take oxygen from the air, so she thinks I ought to get rid of my plants. LOL I refuse to. I go the passive aggressive route and purchase another every time she makes a remark about it. ;) Yeah, yeah, I know... Not nice. Hehe! Anyway, Absolutely beautiful pictures of your hoyas my friends! Keep it up! I truly love them and really need the cheer so please share them! =) ~Tina

Thank you! :) The seedlings sure are cute! Such slow growers, but they're starting to look like small serpens plants now. They might have gotten too little light in the first few months of their lives, maybe that's why they didn't grow any true leaves for such a long time. amber m/ The serpens seeds sprouted without any problems. I just carefully picked them out of the cotton and lay them on top of moits soil, and then misted them with a spraying bottle. I used small pots (maybe 2 inch), the pots were then put inside clear plastic drinking cups with clear plastic wrapping covering the top (I poked "breathing holes" in the plastic covering). Like mini greenhouses! The success rate was close to 100%, but I weeded out the weak ones and only kept the ones that grew the most. Kind of regret not keeping them all. :/ Let's try and embed a picture of the mini greenhouse, and at the same time I can try to learn how to resize pictures from photobucket (thanks for the tip on how to do it, greedyghost)... You can see the tiniest little speck of a seedling towards the middle of the pot, and a couple of light brown seeds lying on the soil. rennfl/ How exciting that you've got serpens seedling too! We must compare notes, and see what is the best way to raise these babies! :) How large are your seedlings at the moment?And do you have a lot of them?

lol EXPERIMENTS! I love these sample-of-one 'experiments' too. Maybe our findings are unreliable and swarming with confounds, but sometimes we can catch the whisper of something informative. @ (Paraphrasing) "Is it okay to encourage my Hoya to grow aerial roots when all its hard work will eventually be lost?" I've had this thought a lot, and here are the conclusions I've come to. Usually, I'm experiencing this situation with a cutting. And it is my belief that the aerial roots are able to provide additional support to the plant (however temporary) that justifies their having been grown, despite their short life span. Second, aerial roots can't help but make people feel excited about the visible exuberance of their plant. And that makes us more engaged with it, which is always good. I once lost a whole group of cuttings because I just wasn't in the mood for more plants when I got them. I know that sounds terrible, but sometimes people are depressed. Anyway, it is never good to not care whether a cutting makes it or not - I think they can tell. >_> So, I say, aerial roots are good for my excitement, which makes them good for the plant. As crazy as that sounds. @ (Paraphrasing) "The plants don't care much for the humidity - or at least could get more light outside the bag, which is more valuable." I do think that it's coincidence that your unbagged Hoya is blooming and your bagged one isn't. Because 15 days just isn't long enough to determine whether one plant is going to bloom versus the other. In other words, I bet if the blooming plant had been bagged it would have bloomed anyway. As you say, there are size differences, etc etc etc. I hear you, regarding choosing between high light and high humidity as, usually, both don't coincide (in our homes). But I seem to experience an equal performance boost with both high humidity and high light. What is most interesting is putting plants that are reaaaaally stingy growers in an aquarium, because some of them will take off like that was all they were waiting for. It's not always easy to predict, by looking at them, which ones these will be. Currently I keep my caudatas and patellas in the aquarium. Plants definitely bloom more in the aquarium. If I take them out, sometimes they stop. :( :( I think there's also a confound there, though, because they send down water roots and become kind of semi-hydro. @ "warmth vs. light" I am interested to see the results of your study! I am too lazy to provide heat except for under rooting plants. I used to have it in all my aquariums, but never replaced the water heaters after they died on me. The aquariums are still warm from the lightbulbs tho... @ "what should I do for the buds" Ha - I think this is one of those areas where people's buds crash and then they look for something to pin the blame on, often drawing illusory correlations. My advice is stay the course, just like you planned. I've never had buds drop because I sprayed water or anything else on them. I try to avoid spraying insecticides on them, of course, but its happened by accident with no reaction. I do think that plants consume a bit more water when producing their buds, so, you might want to be a little more watchful of how fast they dry out. But you still want to maintain the usual drying out period and not keep them soaked all the time, like suddenly they have become African Violets. @ "Are SRQ sales 'for real'? Yes, they are for real! The normal prices are a lot higher, because Joni grows a unique collection of Hoyas primarily consisting of species that would require time to track down, luck getting in on a group order, or expensive import costs. Obviously, the cuttings included in a bundle are probably not all going to be the rarest of the rare in her collection - but rather her best performers. (Which is a self-selection bonus in itself, if you are looking for easy-growers.) But, honestly, if even 1/3 of the bundle were particularly exciting, you'd still come out ahead. And if you're just starting your collection... go go go go! I've watched noobie Hoya growers place their first orders with Joni again and again (and been there myself) and people's first orders always look exactly like these selections anyway. So chances are you'll receive something close to what you'd have picked out in your first couple purchases, anyway. Except cheaper. YAY p's. (shouting) CONGRATS ON BUDS!