Ya, Ya....I am a copycat. I have nothing blooming or really happening, but while blog reading today, I came across this post, and absolutely loved the sideshow, so I had to do my own. Mine is different in the sense that I did a puzzle sort of slide show, so it makes for a bit of a guessing game.
Look for an AV slide show in the days to come too, I just can't resist.
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.
I laid my first African leaf in the Spring of 2007. I didn't do anything special them and I did not give them any special treatment at all, and yet they have all done well. When I first started laying the leaves, I used a mix of peat, perlite and a tiny bit of vermiculite (I have since cut out the use of peat and moved to coir, and I no longer use vermiculite). I started out by putting several leaves in a small shallow container, but now I use Dixie cups, and plant one leaf per cup. When laying the leaves, I would slice the leaf stem on a angle, and then lay them at roughly a 45 degree angle against the cup. I never put them baggies as I find they rot very fast, but I also have a humidifier running 24/7. I normally just put them under lights, and let them go.
Many people ask how long it takes from the time you lay the leaf to have a blooming plant. The general consensus is about 9 months (give or take a month or so). Mine have followed the average, and they are all getting ready to bloom. I remember the excitement I felt, when my first babies made their way to the surface, now I am feeling the excitement to see what some of these flowers look like.
The cuttings I recieved of my Black Pagoda lipstick plant have rooted, and quite quickly. When I did the "tug test", they were rooted firmly. It has only been 4 weeks, I am very impressed. When I get cuttings from other plants, I always put them in a pot and then in a baggie, and seal it up. I find since I have been using baggies, I do not lose as many cuttings.
I took cuttings from a bunch of Schlums back in November, potted them up, and put them under lights in my humidity dome (I would use baggies as well on these, but they fit in the humidity dome unlike some larger cuttings). All of them have rooted as well, I find these very easy to propagate.
My other Schlum (pic here) has perked up some since this photo was taken. Since there was still one segment that looked pretty pitiful, I pulled it to check the roots and found it was starting to rot.
I have never had this happen before, and I not sure why only one of the cuttings in the pot rotted and the other 2 were fine. It may have been damaged already, or just too far gone when it was potted up.
I am so glad that there are certain types of plants that can and will bloom in the dark days of Winter. I get nervous when the days get colder and darker thinking it will be months before I see flowers, but this never happens. Reason......because there are plants that flower under less light than others, and there are plants that are considered short day plants (which means they need so many hours of darkness to flower, such as a schlum or kalanchoe).
The plants I have seen flower over the winter, that are in my collection are:
African Violets
Various Lipstick plants (Aechynanthus)
Azaleas
Schlums (Holiday Cacti)
Kalanchoe
Goldfish plants (Nematanthus)
Fuchsia
String of Hearts (Ceropegia Woodii)
Crown of Thorns (Euphorbia milli)
Passion Vine (Passiflora)
Poinsettia
The above links will take you to some of my older blog posts, each one having a picture of the
flower.
It felt like a little tiny piece of my Thanksgiving cactus slapped me in the face....lol. I have seven of these guys in various places of my home, all growing nicely. My daughter came to me yesterday and said "Oh, by the way, my Thanksgiving cactus is getting flowers again." WHAT!! So off I go, camera in hand, and sure enough....buds. **Slap** WTF?? So now I am mad at all my other plants (only Thanksgiving cacti), because they don't have any buds, not even signs of buds. So I did what was necessary and sent them to her room.
Must be some magic happening in her room......although I am pretty positive it is just because my plants don't get the 12 hours uninterrupted darkness that I am sure her plants get. I have fluorescent lights in my plant area, and since they aren't on a timer, and since my plants are just off the dining room / kitchen area (high traffic 20 hours of the day), they don't get the same dark treatment as her room. Bad news for her....lol, since that means I have to send more plants up there, and she already complains that she has too many plants. How can anyone ever have too many plants? I just don't understand this concept....lol.
My hubby was taking pictures the other day of some of our plants, and as I was looking through them last night, I noticed the cutest little sight. In the back of the room, where the extension cord runs up the wall, my hoya has decided to use it to climb. It is just amazing how these plants will twine and climb onto anything they can get their vines onto.
If only every plant propagated as well as the Christmas or Thanksgiving cactus. I have not lost a cutting of this ever, even when I can't get around to it right away. I have two humidity domes for high humidity plants, or for rooting some plants. I had totally forgotten about a few cuttings that I had pretty much thrown in the humidity dome, and today I found it laying at the bottom, hidden from view. The picture below shows roots already developing even though it has not been potted up yet. These are as easy to root as putting some cuttings in a baggie and giving it a spray of water. I did not pot this one up yet, I am going to continue to see how it does in the humidity dome.
So they are easy to root, and the root system develops quite quickly. I use small white Dixie cups when rooting various things, and the picture below shows the roots that have formed over a three month period. These cuttings were put in the cup (no rooting hormone) on October 24 2007, and three months later this is the root system it has developed.
Many of my first babies are starting to show small buds. It will be the first time I have seen some of them bloom, so I am really excited. The African Violet in the picture below is gearing up to throw out some flowers, but this one is somewhat different from my other AV's. The leaves are cupped, and they are unlike any AV I have ever seen. I know there are many leaf types when it comes to AV's, but this is the first one I have seen that has leaves cupped like this. When I first started noticing this trait, I thought at first it was having problems (low light, high light, not enough fertilizer). I have come to see now, that this isn't the case, as it has continued to grow quite nicely, and it is ready to bloom.
Here is a close up pic of the same African Violet pictured above. The first flower bud is just starting to peek it's head out from under the leaves. I can't even begin to imagine what the flowers look like, other than they look somewhat purple.
And last but not least I had to show off an African Violet that has steadily bloomed over the past few months. It is so nice to be able to see flowers in the dead of winter.
Even though I have never seen my Hoya pubicalyx flower, it is still one of my favorite hoya's. It is one of the hoya's that shows it's climbing/twining habit quite well. Every few days I have to untangle it's long vines from other nearby plants. I hesitate to twine them around the bamboo hoop until they are nearly a foot long; this way I can twine it around the hoop and still leave 4 or five inches to continue to twine. I have found this hoya can get pretty dry between waterings. Mine has gone very very dry, and yet I have never seen it wilt or wrinkle. It sits in an East window, and seems to do quite well there. I am not sure which cultivar of hoya pubicalyx this is, but I find them all very nice. I will only be able to tell when it flowers. Here is a link to some pics of flowers from the hoya pubicalyx.
I took some cuttings of my Schlum a few weeks ago and stuck them in my humidity dome. They rooted very well in there, but a couple days ago I took it out of the humidity dome, and put them on my window sill. They seem to be a bit stressed. They have lost some of their succulence, and it is starting to wilt. I am going to keep and eye on it for the next few days, and if it does not start to recover on its own, I am going to put it back into my humidity dome. Even though it feels quite firmly rooted in it's pot, I am considering the possibility that the roots have not developed enough to support itself just yet.
I had to include this pic in my blog, even though I showed some pics of it a couple posts ago. It is my strep and my hubby and I were discussing photoshop earlier today when he asked me to "create" a pic such as this one. The left side shows a pic of the whole plant, whereas the right is an extreme close up of the top. This pic was put together by Dear Hubby, and he wanted me to post it in my blog. Here you go Honey!! (He doesn't even read my blog, but that is besides the point...lol)
"Thor Livia"
Today, on my search for new buds on my Schlum's, I found a very odd growing segment on one. Instead of being flat like they normally are, this one has three sides. If you look closely at the center of this pic, it can be seen. It is not standing erect like the other segments, so in the pic, it's top is facing towards you. I have never seen this before , so I don't know what could possibly cause this. I think it will be quite amusing to see it grow. I wonder if the segments that will grow on it will become three-sided as well. 
One of my absolute favorite hoya's is my Hoya compacta, I love everything about this hoya; the twisted leaves, the flowers, the scent. It flowered quite readily this past summer. It is in a 6 inch pot, and to be honest, I have not changed the mix since I got it almost a year ago. I have good reasoning behind it though. It is root bound in this pot and it goes dry every 3 or 4 days. So I know that it is still growing well in this mix. I want to put off as long as possible as to keep it snug.
I was totally shocked that this picture came out as clear as it did. In the center of the pic, a small peduncle started to grow. It is still laying on the branch. This peduncle started forming a few months ago when the plant went bloom crazy, but it never grew past this point. When the flowering stopped, so did the growth of this little peduncle.
Even though we are in the midst of winter, most of my plants have continued to grow. There are a few that have stopped, but most have continued to grow. This is a pic of a new leaf emerging from one of my hoya's.
WooHoo!! I went to the nursery today to wander around and drink my coffee. I was kind of disappointed when I walked in and saw poinsettias as far as the eye can see. Don't get me wrong, there are some really beautiful cultivars out there, but I am not that much into them. I was on the prowl for hoya's and gessie's.
Well never mind the hoya's or gessie's for now, I found a gold zygocactus from the Thor series. I just had to have a gold zygocactus after seeing a few pics on another forum. Imagine my surprise when not only did I find one, but a named one at that. The gold zygo is called "Thor Alex". I also got a cutting of "Thor Livia", which should be a white flower. I also already have "Thor Zita". Just another plant I can obsess over.
