That "teddy bear" is gorgeous! I might get that one next time. And i see you got two plants from the Hoya soidaoensis.

Yeah, I guess they rooted two cuttings of H. soidaoensis in there. One was pretty small, but I potted it up separately, as long as they separated.

I didn't see the manipurensis on their list! I guess I may have to go ahead and place an order... that's at the top of my wish list.

Denise in Omaha

Gorgeous! What is that Spartiodes planted in? From the pic (or my bad eyes lol) it looks like a block of a tree trunk?

I love that Teddy Bear (a must have) and that Undulata. Also, the SP VL9 and so GPS 7240.

Well, I guess I should just say, I love them all! :-)

Very nice haul there !

Marco

> I didn't see the manipurensis on their list!

They do update the list periodically. But I have a list I printed from their site about a month ago, and manipurensis was there, so it's not a VERY recent addition.

> What is that Spartiodes planted in? From the pic (or my bad eyes lol) it looks like a block of a tree trunk?

I think it's a large chunk of coconut fiber. A few of them were planted in these things. I removed only the loosest parts, but kept it mostly intact, not wanting to rip the roots apart - and now I actually regret it. I have no idea how that medium is going to work in my environment - it may stay wet forever, or dry out forever, and I won't even see it because I filled the gaps in the pots with my own medium.

For those of you who got plants in this medium - did you remove it completely, leave it intact, or did something in-between?

Beautiful plants! I did remove all those Coco chunks because it's hot and humid here. Previous order from a few years back.

I removed as much as i could and planted it. I also did not want to rip the roots out. They seem to grow just fine in it.

Good order a short amount of time! Plants look great! I like the idea of them leaving on the medium because I think there is less damage to the roots while in transit. Another overseas vendor strips everything off his roots and i think that damages the roots enough so they are half dead and beginning to rot when you plant them up.The plant can not revive itself with the compromised roots and the other stress factors involved in transit. The plants i received ,i soaked for an hour in water with some Garden friendly Fungicide and planted them up with all the husks on and filled in with my reg. mix. All are growing well and I had to restart just one.The roots did not make it and the plant was loosing leaves from the bottom up( Khao Soi Dao). I cut it up onto three cuttings and put them in the humidity dome and they are now growing. Did not want to lose that one! My h maxima was growing in a chunk of husk and I just planted it in a pot with my medium.It put out a new leaf around 3 weeks later.

You got several of what I think of as "specialty" Hoya plants and the price was quite reasonable. I hope you post some pix of the spartioides when it blooms. I love its alien-like appearance. I have to check out this AH Hoya place because the plants I'm seeing posted here are nothing short of amazing.

Best of luck with your new Hoyas.

gloria

Thank you, Gloria. What makes a Hoya "specialty" Hoya?

If you are on facebook, friend / like AH Hoya there. They post a lot of cool plants.

They are, by far, the best overseas vendor!

At least, in Thailand

very pretty plants.

greentoe357,

Sorry to resurrect this old thread, but I am thinking of ordering some plants from Thailand and I wanted to know if you sent an import permit/import label to the company or if you sent in any paperwork at all?

I just faxed "PPQ form 587" to the USDA/APHIS/PPQ headquarters in Maryland to apply for an import permit to import Hoyas.

I see that you live in NYC; did you have to go to the inspection station in NY to pick up your plants or were they sent directly to your home address? I live in MN and I don't believe there is any inspection station anywhere near me.

I will be ordering from Epiphytica dot com rather than ordering from AHHoyas. Epiphytica has pics of each of the Hoyas they sell and I am ordering more based on leaves than on flowers; while the flowers are beautiful, the flowers tend to be rather seasonal while the foliage is beautiful year round.

Has anyone here ever ordered from Epiphytica?

Thanks,

Mike

Your hoyas are beautiful. I wish I could have gotten faster shipping when I ordered from Poland. They said that It was express but it took 3weeks or more and the plants were black and slimy when I got them

If you order 12 or less there is no paper work and the plants come straight to your home.

Mike, I wholeheartedly agree about growing Hoyas for leaves primarily. I do that as well, for the most part. (There are just a few exceptions where I grow them for the flowers, with boring leaves.)

I have not gotten around to getting an import permit yet - mostly because here in NYC, we do not have a local Agriculture Dept office to show up at (NYC is not a big agriculture center, as you can imagine lol), and I do not have a car. (We are all about subway and buses here.) And it's not even in the suburbs, to take a train to - you need to like REALLY go god knows where to get one. My friends live 3 hr drive away, upstate, and a bunch of us visit once in a while, so I thought maybe that is how I can get around to getting one - there is an office right in their town. But really, like tlbean says, just order 12 plants or less, and you do not need an import permit, so I might just keep doing that every time OI get an itch for Thailand Hoyas.

But now that you are well on the way to getting your import permit, it's a good idea to check where the local office is. You can do it here: https://offices.sc.egov.usda.gov/locator/app?type=lra. Let us know how that process goes for you.

By the way...

A bit of advice for all you Thailand Hoya orderers in temperate climates, so that you do not repeat my mistake. As you can see from my pics above (or may know from your own experience), the plants come in rooted into either coconut husk chips (loose cubes), or into tightly packed coco fiber (parallel long strands of coco, very tight around the roots, best seen in my H. spartioides photo above).

I tried to remove the medium as much as I could, without ripping off too much of the root mass. Now, it's very clear to me that the tightly packed coco fiber, shown in some of these pics, had to be removed much more completely (leaving the little cubes of coco husk chips on is fine, in my experience).

In several cases, I left sizeable chunks of the tight fiber where the roots grew deeply into it, sometimes half of that coco plug was left in place, and sometimes even the whole thing, when it felt impenetrable. Big mistake! Several plants died soon after, and some others had to be urgently restarted.

This rooting medium may work in humid Thailand, but in my NYC indoors (obviously) climate, it seems like water could not penetrate the tight fiber, and when humidity is also too low to get in there, the plant dies of dehydration.

So, in the next order I am definitely removing those WHOLE coconut plugs around the roots. Of course, you should try to preserve the roots, generally, but the suffocating plug has to go, even if all the roots are ripped and the plant has to root again.

Just my experience and my advice for you today. :-)

Thank you very much for that valuable information! I will heed your warning regarding the coco husk products and remove as much as I can once I receive the plants.

I will need to wait a couple of months before I order any plants due to the cold weather that still plagues the state of Minnesota!

On that same note, what was the approximate time-frame from the date that you ordered the plants via email (start of the process) to the date that you received your plants? Just a rough guess?

Thanks,

Mike

> I will heed your warning regarding the coco husk products and remove as much as I can

I made a distinction in my post between the two different coconut products they use. Coco husk chips (little soft cubes) are fine to remain on the roots if they do not come off easily in water, in my experience. It's that other coco product, that very hard coco plug thing that some plants come with (see sipitangensis photo all the way above) - THAT has been a problem for me.

> what was the approximate time-frame from the date that you ordered the plants via email (start of the process) to the date that you received your plants?

My order took pretty long before it shipped. I had asked for some pics, and there were some language barrier issues for us to sort through... Then they simply forgot to ship my order on a particular Friday, so it had to wait till the next Friday... This is not likely to repeat for you, I hope. Shiping itself took less than a week in my case.

Thank you!

I like the looks of that sp GPS-7240. Is that an easy one to keep? How are your plants doing now? ....the ones that survived?

GPS-7240 was one of those that died, unfortunately, because I did not remove that tight coco plug. It came in one that was one of the tightest, actually. Impenetrable. :-(

I am likely going to order from AH Hoya again, in the spring, and I'll learn from this mistake this time.

I just did the mental count - 6 of those 12 are dead. :-( Chicken Farm, GPS-7240 and spartioides most likely died because of the coco plug. Undulata, imbricata and clemensiorum died for other reasons (they are all pretty challenging to take care of, for many people).

The other 6 are all alive and well. Several have multiplied in size like crazy. I just showed one of them at my local gardening club. One other has bloomed (manipurensis, as a tiny plant, very weird little number.)

Recent pics of some of these plants. Hoya caudata Sumatra:

Hoya flagellata yellow:

The Maidenhair Fern [?] was a hitchhiker from Thailand! I kept plucking the fronds out as it was growing, but then I was, like, "What am I doing??? This thing is adorable!" So, now I let it grow. Eventually, I will have to pluck it out for good - the thing is growing many times faster than the thing that is supposed to be growing there! Grr. And by the way, I think this one also came in that tight coco plug - but it *is* surviving. It grew one leaf even. Yay. Little things! :-)

Hoya sp. VL9:

This was another victim of the tight coco plug. Scroll up and see how large this plant was. :-( I managed to save a 3-leaf cutting, rooted it, and just a couple days ago saw new growth on it. I love that little guy.

Hoya sp. Perak Teddy Bear SRQ 3227 red corona:

Full plant:

New leaf detail:

Another young leaf:

(You could tell from the number of pics how much I love this one, right? lol)

Finally, the one that bloomed, Hoya manipurensis:

It's a tiny plant. It apparently knows how to bloom better than how to grow.

I 100% agree with removing the coco husk fiber from the plants! The first thing I do is remove that! It usually has a rubber band around it, and a good soak makes it easier to remove, with minimal root damage. That being said, I have had a couple come that were pretty tight in there. I just took cuttings of those, after allowing them to recover from shipping.

The squishy coconut "sponge"; I pull most of that off with ease. I wash it, and sanitize it with a 1 part bleach solution to 10 parts water. Rinse, squeeze dry, and save for difficult to root plants.

Most of mine are still thriving, but I did have to restart a couple. One casualty (my fault...temporarily placed it on a shelf I don't keep plants on and forgot about it).

Manipurensis is a tricky one. I find it aborts new leaves rather easily. It doesn't mind drying out between waterings, but seems happiest when kept slightly damp at all times. Easy to bloom.

Wow thanks for sharing love this thread! Can't imagine the pain of losing so many of those plants D:

Wondering how do I order from AH Hoya? When I go to their website I only see pictures but no way to check out. Thanks for the help!

@Mike did you end up ordering from ephiphitica? How did it go?

Thanks!

What you have to do is send her a message and let her know which plants you are interested in purchasing. She will tell you if she has them available and she will ask you what size you would like. You should also let her know that you would like for them to be shipped bare root that way she does not send you ones with the coco fiber blocks on it. Some folks like the coco fiber but some don’t. I have ordered from her quite a lot and I always ask for bare root shipped plants. Hope this helps. Dee

Dee, what shipping method do you select?

Thx

I choose EMS, it gets here in 4 days.

I have an order that just shipped so should be here Monday. I will take a picture so you can see what I mean with the ‘bare roots’.

thx. i ordered three plants when there was a group order last fall. all are alive, but no growth. but one looks like it might pop something out. another could die (because i just can't provide the humidity right now) and the other is just sorta hanging out.

amaranth I received my order from AH yesterday and I am attaching a picture of the ‘bare roots’. This is how I ask for mine to come, they seem to do better but you can ask for cuttings and I think they may be a little cheaper however it will not affect your shipping charges, which is another reason i get them with roots. They were a little dry, to be expected, but a good soak for a bit before planting and they are good to go. Hope this helps with what you were asking.

Resurrecting again. I have searched all over about the import permit and I just keep getting contradicting information. I have ordered from a Thai vendor before and they included the phytosanitary certificate with my order and I had not customs issues. I am wondering with AH Hoya or Epiphytica if they take care of this as well. Will i need an import permit from USDA sent to them if I am just ordering a few plants? Thanks for any help you can provide on the whole import process. I appreciate it!

You generally don’t need a permit for less than 12 plants, however, USDA and customs is starting to crack down on importing plants. It doesn’t cost anything for a permit you just have to fill out online. You definitely have to have a phyto certificate or customs will confiscate your package and send you a letter with an empty box. AH and Epiphytica will take care of your phyto other vendors you have to ask for one. Hope this helps clear up any confusion.

Thanks Dee for responding! AH and Epiphytica both say I would have to send my sticker to them. I just have no idea how this process works and USDA website is clear as mud. Was going to take my chances at just ordering less than 12 and hoping for the best but now I am not sure what I should do.