2008 turned out to be a good year for my plants. Didn't lose too many, nearly all of them put on a LOT of new growth, and I got flowers where I hadn't before. I was reading through my Feb. post and wanted to make some notes about the plants mentioned...

I had two peduncles form and flower in the early spring on my Hoya australis ssp. tenuipes. The flowers were stunning! See for yourself in the photo below.

The flowers are pure white, the petals form a perfect star (most Hoya flowers are more rounded-edged stars...), and there is a splash of deep red behind the middle star, which is also perfectly white. It grew like gangbusters all summer long. I kept having to whack it at the top of the trellis. I've got two new potfulls started and ready to sell this next spring. By the time fall got here, it was covered with new peduncles. Interestingly enough, peduncles seem to form on older vines as well as newer ones. It seemed like they were never going to bud up, but then about the first of Oct., I started to see the characteristic "fuzzy" look that signals the budding process. By late Oct., I had flowers opening. They're so fragrant at night, I could smell them from the basement! And I think they initiated some allergies for me, because I spent most of the fall on benedryl trying to keep my sinuses in check. But the beautiful and fragrant display was well worth it! My last flowers dropped around the first of Dec. - I'm very impressed with the longevity of the flowers on this species....

But still no hint of flowers on the australis ssp. sana. It grows like a weed and is huge, so I have to believe it's just a matter of time...

I also mentioned my Dischidia ovata in the Feb. post. It's budding up again right now, and the flowers are really cute. It's continued to grow and looks fabulous. The big one is the one I got from Cowboyflowerman (who I refer to in shorthand as "CBFM"...) and was a nice-sized plant to start. My older one I got from Yale as a cutting and I was having trouble getting it going, which is why I bought the CBFM ovata. I almost completely lost the one from Yale, but this year it started to grow and has done well. But I notice that the leaves on the one from Yale are smaller and a little more succulent than the one from CBFM. I suppose they're simply two different clones. I started one in a little birdcage-style planter and look forward to it covering the bars with foliage this next year...

Dr. Livshultz, the lady at UNO who is an expert in Dischidias, decided to go back to the east coast. Tom (from my C&S club, who is the GH manager at UNO) called me to see if I wanted some cuttings from her collection, which she left behind! Dumb question! So BJ (also from my C&S club) and I went to the GH in mid or late Oct. and got bags full of cuttings. Unfortunately, fall is not the ideal time to start cuttings, but some took for me. I'm hoping I can get back over there sometime and get some more. BJ and I have told Tom we'd be happy to help him "clean up" the collection in exchange for some more cuttings. Hope he takes us up on that offer...

But here are the ones that I got... This is one that is actually a full plant, not just a cutting. I got hold of Tanya's new e-mail and she confirmed the IDs, so this one is D. acuminata, the fasciated form... The leaves seems almost fuzzy. Tom seemed positive it was a Hoya, and from looking at it, I would have thought so too, but Tanya says it's a Dischidia. I'm anxious to get flowers on it... I also ended up with some more cuttings of acutifolia, which is a cutting I got from Yale that has done very well for me. D. griffithii is an interesting one that I hope will do well for me. The leaves are kind of heart shaped... I'll have to post photos of all the new ones later on when I sort through and get good photos.

I got a pretty little flower on what I thought was D. geri, but someone said geri flowers were all white...

It could be the one I got from the lady in Florida that Tanya says is oiantha Schltr. - it looks a LOT like geri, but maybe it's those flowers that make it a different clone or from a different region...

And I want to post one last Dischidia photo in this "session" - I'd love to post more, but when I put a photo in, it puts it at the top and I have to move it down, which then screws up the blog and I have to go back and fix it. It's a real pain in the butt!! I should try to figure out why it does that... But anyway, this last photo is of my D. oiantha variegata that I got as a cutting from Yale in the spring of '05. It rooted and did ok in '06, but then was a little lethargic in '07. This last year, it took off and looks fantastic. I'm starting to think it might be almost as good a grower as the plain form of oiantha. But what is fascinating is I got a couple shoots of almost pure white growth. Take a look...

So that's about it for now. In my next post, I'll detail all the new Hoyas I acquired this year. I got a little carried away, but I managed to add a lot of really neat new ones to my collection.

Later!