Friday, December 6, 2013

Wax Star Plant


This is a Wax Star Plant. Also known as a Hoya. I think they're amazingly beautiful plants even when not in flower.

These little flowers are about the size of a dime each. They are tiny! And so pretty. They do sort of feel like wax if you touch them.

I have many Hoya plants similar to this one at home. I recently repotted them all into the same pot. I used an old bundt pan and placed them all around the circle. This picture was from the "before". I don't have any flowering photo's from the "after" repotting yet.

The cuttings I got to start my own plants came from a plant my dad got from some old lady well before I was ever even born. Since I pretend to still be in my 20's, we'll say that my dad has had it for 35 years or so. Over the years it's flowered a few times for my dad but not often or regularly. Sometimes going years between flowering.

Then I got my cuttings and grew them and started getting flowering sections fairly quickly! I was so excited thinking I might NEVER see it again. Then I found this really old plant book at some random store along the way or maybe my mom gave it to me and it actually had this plant listed in there. It doesn't seem to be a very common plant now but maybe was more popular years ago. Apparently flowers only happen on the new growth. Cutting back the plant and making new plants will help it to flower. They also like to be watered a bit less often to help with flowering and like to sort of be a bit overcrowded, having a tighter root ball. They don't need a very large pot.

Once a year I trim it back so new growth can come from it and with those trimmings I start them off in a vase until they grow roots. They take to dirt amazingly well and I've never lost even one cutting. I get flowers all throughout the year and I just weave the flowering sections up a bit so that the flowers can be well displayed. This plant does like to vine and will cling to itself, window treatments, and other plants.

So, if you like plants, this one is a beautiful plant for foliage or flowering. The flowers last a good while too. Next time I'll try to get a pic before the flowers open, they look like little gift wrapped stars.

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