Denise, Tolumnea's are a very exciting genus! I hope the pots you picked up are terra cotta inside a terra cotta. I've been doinking around with these for 10 years. They are your typical mysterious plants which carry for each person asked a totally different growing regimen. If you ask 14 people... 14 different plans to succeed!! I did get a fairly successful plan of care from a wholesaler who wisely reminded "Where they come from carries the clue!" She told me that they were coastal rock cranny loving plants. They could tolorate salt and spray (mist) but not soaking or continued dampness. Based on her advice I've kept alive two of the three I picked up from her. There are about 8 different color families and ALL of them are sweet and lovely. A great family of plants if you can satisfy them!!! Post some pix, why don'cha? Those sweet little almost pansy faces! Really bad pix, NOT doing justice!

GG, thanks for the pictures and for the rooting illustrations! I am intrigued by communal rooting. I've only done it in individual little plastic cups, so that roots can be seen growing. How do you (and you, Denise) know when it's time to repot to individual pots? I am assuming it's hard to tell which cutting(s) have rooted reliably enough for that? Is your sign resistance to light tugging? What if some cuttings are ready and others are not? This shared hormones thing is interesting. By the way, I've read recently about the rooting hormones that are sold as gel or powder. I thought they are chemicals that encourage plants to form roots in that area - and that is true. But what I did not know is that they are the same chemicals (only synthetically produced) that plants develop themselves. Do you use rooting hormones? I wonder if sharing the hormones is important if every stem is dipped into the hormone of its own. I've placed my little cups into a container for humidity, but a vessel like this will take less space and also create humidity. There's no drainage, I assume, right? Which is fine because it's hydroton and some water needs to be at the bottom anyway, and because it's a relatively short term home for the plants. Sunny, I agree your cuttings look fine. The thinner leaf varieties tend to lose moisture when cut faster than those with thicker leaves, but then most do regain it slowly once they are in the mix and kept moist and humid. One of the cuttings I am rooting now (GG, your heuschkeliana) did arrive a bit dehydrated, but for a month now very slowly it's been regaining moisture. It's pretty cool to watch. I've never seen an established plant, but all leaves except for the lowest one look very much turgid now and have lost all of their wrinkles. I foolishly thought when I got the plant the wrinkles were part of the deal of how this plant looks - I thought that was charming and unusual. hehe One thing I personally would change, Sunny, is I suggest taking larger cuttings. It does depend on the plant's growth habit, leaf size, distance between nodes etc., but a 2-3 node cutting is likely to root better and be stronger than a one-node one. It's no biggie though - they all should root, especially no problem at this time of year. How is humidity now in San Antonio? I covered them up in the winter, and even these days 30% humidity here is normal, but too low for optimal rooting. Big Box stores may not have hydroton indeed, but your local hydroponics store is almost guaranteed to have at least one type of hydro medium. It does not have to be hydroton - it could be called LECA, PrimeAgra, Growstone, Grow Rock, Hydrocorn and many others. They all look slightly or even significantly different, but they work essentially the same. Having open options means you may get the medium sooner and won't have to pay shipping, which is expensive for these bulky bags.

Go for it, Harrison. Joni is a great resource and a real sweetheart. Her plants are always healthy and pest-free in my experience, and more recently she's been trying to include multiple starts in a pot so that your odds are better if it's a delicate species and you get off to a bumpy start with it. This saved my tookus with waymaniae, I'll tell you. ^_~ Plus, she has a ton of really good ones in the August sale, imo. $10 is a steal for sure. You're not going to get it for less on ebay, at least not for plants of the relative rarity of most of her offerings. I think I got 25% of my plants during last year's summer sale.... jk (I think) :3 I prefer to avoid ebay, too, although it's a small world on there, hoya-wise, and if you have a question about a specific vendor on there, most of them are known to this group, so just ask. There are some sketchy ones, but there are also some solid gold ones there, like C Burton (thehoyan), David (dmichael619), and a handful of others I haven't ordered from personally, so I can't comment on. There are also a lot of threads devoted to the topic of vendors that you can find with a quick search. If you want to know more about SRQ, do a quick search for Joni (or follow my link below) and you'll see that the name pops up a lot around here. Also, you can see when Dee visited her, pictures and all! woohoo! Here is a link that might be useful: GardenWeb/Hoya/Joni

When you moved the plant to a bigger pot how big did you go? A 4" pot would have been the best size until a larger root system formed. I think you are right to suspect the cool temperature as the cause of rot. I have had this happen with Hoya imperalis during the winter before. Hoya bicknellii has very hard succulent leaves when they are mature so I think it will be very capable of rooting without becoming stressed. If you are using an aquarium and can get the day time temperature to get nice and warm then it should root easily. Maybe a light bulb could serve as your source of extra warmth. As for the length I would do whatever works best in the rooting tank. I like to use longer cuttings but in any case cutting off the bare vine above the last set of leaves is perfectly fine. I find this species to be very top heavy and awkward as a cutting so maybe smaller is better in this case, say two sets of leaves per cutting. Are there small leaves developing on the bare vine yet? Mike