Hoya DS-70

I feel like a copycat posting this after Sandy's beautiful photo, but it's probably just coincidence this is the next hoya in my list...

Hoya DS-70
Type: Leaves 4-7 cm, glabrous.

Flowers: small and dark purple when mature, although I haven't seen any on mine yet!

I bought this plant from Paul Shirley after hearing that it is easy to grow and flowers fairly easily. It didn't root very easily but now it has rooted it seems to be quite happy. It responds well to warmth - my front room was quite cold for a spell because my radiator wasn't working - and seems to be a fairly fuss-free plant. It is also known as Tsangii.

In other news, I've updated my website so that it looks much nicer and I'm now considering adding a page of FAQ's - time and time again I see fairly similar questions on the forums I go to, so I thought putting a page that gave useful information might be helpful. The imperialis lost a leaf but I'd been expecting it to do that for months, and was surprised that it hadn't happened sooner given I burnt the poor thing under the intense glass of my bathroom - oops! This wouldn't be such a problem if it wasn't for the fact the poor plant's only got two leaves... but it is growing, slowly given the cold weather, so hopefully it'll take off in the spring. The polyneura has stopped losing leaves for the time being, so I guess it likes being in the colder kitchen and being watered less frequently. The pentaphlebia is still waving at me and not growing at all, but doesn't seem to be losing leaves either, so I guess it's OK, probably just waiting for a bit more sun and warmth - not lovely hailstones like I got caught in today!

A Bit Of Precious Sun For The Hoyas...

Bristol is doing one of its delightful windy and rainy phases at the moment. On my way to London the other day I noticed all the low-lying fields are covered with excess rain, making the poor sheep confine themselves to a small patch of probably waterlogged land.
Anyway, they promised sun for today, and shock horror, they were almost right. We did get some sun! Although I notice there's now a rainbow outside... On one of the forums it was suggested that my polyneura would benefit from going outside but I'm not putting it out there with the wind and the rain! So I have placed it in the kitchen, the place with the least amount of direct sunlight and also the coldest, as there's no radiator in there. The rest of the hoyas all got what is probably much-needed sunshine, I have noticed that although some are still slogging it out and growing (weebella seems to have grown a completely new branch since Christmas...), others are looking decidedly unhappy - even the happy compacta dropped a leaf this week... I also read something that said that misting plants are more for the gardener's happiness than the plants and are a 5-minute solution to a 24 hour problem, so this weekend I went round all my hoyas (apart from the carnosa, I don't think it cares!) and placed gravel under them, so that I can put a little bit of water under them. This solves a couple of problems, one being I don't always have time to spray them, and when I go away they will still get humidity, the other that I'm fairly sure that pebble trays aid movement of air, some hoyas particularly like this. Also, although I don't have the heating on all the time, at this time of the year it can make everything a bit dryer.

Hoya "Weebella"

OK, well my three readers, you will have to forgive me, but since I am actually not getting on with writing my website, I thought I'd put the ones I haven't done yet in my blog, and then copy them over to the website, so that maybe sometime this year it'll get done (this is one of my New Year's resolutions...)

Hoya Weebella


Type: Leaves 1 to 1½ cm, flowers like bella (although probably smaller, will have to wait for that one...)
This plant has come on in leaps and bounds since I first got it, when it looked like this. It even seems to grow in the depths of winter when all the other hoyas are sulking... Apparently it is a small version of Bella, although the leaves are much more rounded. You can read what this plant is really called here, and tell me if you think I should rename it.