Hoya retusa in bloom again!

Gotta love this plant. Reliable, not fussy at all, and blooms like a charm every year. Smells faintly of freesia.

Some Buds!

I was going to call this post "No Peduncles" but, in fact, that's only true for the retusa.
I'm not going to name this one because I'm so superstitious it's not going to flower if I do!
Hoya retusa
Hoya serpens

Bella opening sequence

Ever since my Hoya carnosa flowered in May, I haven't seen one peep of a flower from any of my plants (and I've been looking!). So I was so happy to see buds forming and staying on my Bella. I felt even happier when the plant decided to open bud by bud (and I'd figured out how to use the Macro on my camera). It does smell, very faintly.

British Cacti and Succulent Society National Show

Well, last weekend I went to the British Cacti and Succulent National Show. I nearly didn't make it because the weekend before I'd been in hospital with acute tonsilitis (the tonsils come out in December, so hopefully will not be a problem for long!). Anyway, the only reason I went was to meet Paul Shirley and to see his collection of Hoyas.

Paul was lovely. The show was fairly interesting too. Unfortunately I'm not really a cacti person and, although I find stapelias/huernias fairly interesting, they'll only hold my interest for so long.

I found Paul fairly fast. It wasn't hard, given that he was fairly close to the entrance and the only one selling hoyas. Here he is doing his stuff.

Here is a photo of some of the plants he was selling:

There were all sorts, even a couple of dischidas hiding in amongst the hoyas, waiting to be sold. He sold all his big plants, which included imperialis, variegated kerrii and a couple of baskets of linearis and shepherdii.

I bought dykiae, GPS 81079 (similar to obscura) and meliflua. Here they are after I'd potted them up:

Some Favourites...

For some reason, some of my favourite hoyas begin with "L"

Here you can see Hoya lasiantha (well, it's praetorii, but we'll gloss over that), Hoya linearis and Hoya lauterbachii in all their glory. I got the lasiantha late last year and I didn't know whether it would make it through the winter. Well, it did fine, and I've got several new leaves over the last couple of months! It reminds me a bit of a large multiflora and I hope to see it flower this year, if I'm lucky. The linearis I got only a month ago, and all ready I've got several new furry leaves AND a peduncle! I can't believe my luck! I hope to post the flowers, if I see any, sometime in July.
The lauterbachii I just love for the cute furry leaves. The new baby leaves are even cuter and furrier! I took a cutting from it earlier this year because it wasn't looking happy, but I think that was mostly because it was cold. Now it's looking great again. I don't know if I'll ever see a flower, but that really would be something.
Oh, and I've added a new rooting section to my website here. Suggestions, comments, please.

Surprise!

I wasn't expecting this yet, but I got home to find this a couple of evenings ago...
I know it's only carnosa, but it's still lovely to see after the winter.

What the eye does not see...

I have been playing with my new camera and took this shot of my carnosa in bud:and when I magnified it up it looked like this:
How pretty is that? Fascinating, the little hairs!

Not A Good Winter for The Hoyas

This winter has been very bad for my poor plants. At least one third of my plants have gone yellow and died. It's very sad, but there doesn't seem to be very much I can do for the poor things. This is my Imperialis in its last throes...

However, I do have a couple of plants that are showing signs of flowering - so you never know, there may be some good news around the corner.