Month: December 2016

Posted on

Fragrance of Hoya plants – wax plant scents and environment

hoya wax plant sigillatis fragrance
Hoya sigillatis flowering wax plant with sweet fragrance

We received several questions concerning the scents or fragrance of hoya plant flowers. Hoya plants produce a very wide variety of fragrances. The hoya plants flower scent strength varies depending upon your growing environment and other factors.

Collectors use terms such as chocolate, citrus, vanilla, orange, lemon and other terms to describe the scents of the wax plants. Hoya Publicayx red button has been described with a strong lemony citrus with a hint of vanilla fragrance. However, smell is a personal thing and your growing environment is a factor.

Growing Environment

The scene of the hoyas varies depending upon your growing area. Epic Grower LLC, located in NE Georgia has hot humid summers and cool/cold winters so the fragrance is never strong due to too much moisture in the air.  Its like a fir Christmas tree: when its cold and dry you smell it more than when its warm and humid.

Our publicalyx parent plants (the ones we use to propagate new plants) had tons of flower clusters earlier this year. However,  due to our very humid warm to hot climate we do not notice the hoya plants fragrance as much as somebody would in the northern areas that are either cooler or less humid. Yes, if we put our nose close to the flower we do smell a fragrance.

Nutrients Fragrance Factor

The other factor in the scent of a hoya plant beyond the growing environment is the nutrients in your soil. What nutrients are in the soil can cause some changes in the scent produced. If you have too much phosphate, iron, nitrogen and other nutrients the plant needs to grow then the scent may get strong or lighter.  I’m not an expert on nutrients and smell of plants but there are many articles on how a sent of a flower or plant changes depending what nutrients you feed it.

Do you grow wax plants – hoyas? Do you notice any scent whether strong or slight? What is your growing environment for the hoya plant?  What variety of wax plants are you growing? Please post a comment about hoya plant scent here. It simple to write a comment and it will help others.

Posted on

Adenium plant cropping to grow caudex

Q:  Pruning and cropping is the same thing right? When you have a adenium plant that’s a little leggy and the graft lines are high, how do you prune them to let the trunk catch up.  Thank you for your help

bonsai desert rose plant cropping
Cropping adenium plant to achieve larger caudex

Answer: Pruning or cropping adenium plant branches is need to grow fatter plants. Adenium plant leaf and branch growth mostly occurs are the end of the branches. Sometimes you may get a stray branch that pops out on an older branch below the current leaves but not often.  More branches/leaves means faster growth. Faster adenium plant growth requires more roots to grow which results in a larger caudex on the desert rose plant.

Here are the general rules we use to force the desert rose plant caudex to grow wider and to grow more branches:

  1. Use a bonsai pot so the roots do not grow deep but wide
  2. After each growing season repot the plant (use same post if wide enough) but expose a bit more of the roots/caudex.  Do the repotting when you still have at least 30 days of your growing season let and after you see new branches below the cropping on your desert rose plant.
  3. Do not crop until the plant is in a new growing season and once you see new growth. Many types of plants you can crop while they are dormant, however, cropping an adenium plant produces the best results (not rot, no branch die back) during the spring  after you already notices some growth.
  4. Crop above the graft about 2″ to 3″.
  5. Once your crop / prune the adenium plant you must let it heal over for 5 to 10 days depending upon your growing environment.

There are several other articles on this blog about cropping your adenium plant.  make sure you are using the correct soil, proving enough sunlight and use a root growth hormone such as Dyna-gro K-L-N each time you re-pot the plant.  These are the procedures Epic Grower LLC uses on the plants at their nursery.