Hoya KQ Flowering & First Schlum Fruit!

I just love it when any hoya in the house flowers. They have such stunning flowers. They almost look fake, like they are made of wax. And the smell........some can smell unappealing, but so far from my limited experiences with hoya flowers, they smell amazing........it is so amazing that a flower can produce such a smell.


This is a Hoya "Krimson Princess". This is the cultivar that has some white variegation in the center of the leaves. The flowers are very light pink, they are quite similar to the flowers on my Hoya Compacta. The color in the pics do not do it justice, because both of these plants have very similar flowers, more so in person that in the pics. Both smell just like chocolate, especially at night. It fascinates me that these smell so strongly at night, and less so during the day.


Most hoya flowers should have 5 petals but the once in a while you get odd flower. The flower in the top left side of this pic, only has four petals. I am quite curious to see if this was obvious when it was still a bud, I have to sift through a bunch of pics to see if I have a pic of it......if I do I will post it here.


I have a few other hoya's trying to flower right now or at least growing peduncles. From experience, just because a new peduncle grows, doesn't mean it is going to flower. I have new peduncles forming on a serpens, a lacunosa, a bella, a nummulariodes and a couple noids that are not even trying to form buds. Others, like my 2 lacunosa's, my KQ, and a carnosa are growing peduncles as well as forming buds at the same time.


I am still learning what each individual hoya likes for sun & water, so some of them, although they are trying to flower, keep blasting the buds. I have found that my lacunosa likes quite a bit of water when it is flowering. I have been having the problem of blasting buds for a few months with this one, but since I have really upped the watering, I have found that the buds are getting bigger than they ever had. They are coming closer to flowering that I have ever seen them get, but there is a very fine line between enough water and too much. Twice I have over done it, and the buds yellowed and fell off, whereas before they were drying / shriveling up from too little water.


So enough about my prissy, but spoiled hoya's. I have managed to pollinate one of my Schlum's......a Thanksgiving Cactus. This is a kind of late bloomer in my house, only a couple Schlum's formed more flower buds after their main flowering a few months ago. I have been trying to pollinate one of these guys since early October-ish, when they started to flower, and this is the only one I have seen actually succeed and produce a fruit.

After trying for a while and not being successful, I came across a fellow blogger's post that mentioned that the stigma on these plants opened after a few days, making pollination more successful. I have noticed my Schlum's do this, so this time around I used a small paint brush whiten the stigma's were opened, and tried to get some of the pollen actually "in" the stigma, rather than just "on" it. It worked, only on one flower, so now I am going to have to wait until next year before trying again.