Hey, David,

I spritz some newspaper with a little water and wrap the bare cuttings in it. Has worked fine so far! Linearis isn't nearly as delicate as it looks!

Kelly

Great to hear. Helps boost my confidence.

Thanks for the reply.

I agree that Hoya lilnearis is a pretty tough one as a cutting. I received my cutting loose in a box filled with packing peanuts and other cuttings for course, more than a week in the mail did not even phase it.

Mike

I love everything about linearis. Even reading threads about it lol.

Kelly in Victoria

Kelly V-

Did yours bloom?

Kelly WV

Awesome thanks for the info. I feel more confident sending this one than I do receiving it :)

-David Kincade

Kelly WV:

It did, it did! One perfect little umbel. Very delicate and pale it was. Took some pics with the camera and was supposed to load 'em up I know. Got busy and never did learn how...been getting the house ready for sale and one darn thing after another.

There is another one or possible two coming and I will try to post them. When did I last mention that I just love that little plant? Oh ya, earlier today. Well I do. Might have something to do with it growing so darn well right now. Bit of a limp biscuit to look at, so hard to believe it travels well. Roots fabulously also. I yanked off a long stem accidentally (you aren't the only one Mike), dusted it with rooting hormone, popped it into the Mama pot and a few days later it perked right up.

How is your Mama plant doing? Wouldn't it be a hoot if we could track all of the hoya cuttings as they make their way around the world? You see the concentric circles of pandemics, Wonder if the spread of hoyas look anything like that? lol

/Klyde Aw man! Now you've totally made me sad that we don't have such a live map. And then you could just click on IML 1669 and all the incidents ('outbreaks') of it would get highlighted. With trajectory lines so you could tell which directions the plants were moving and where all the hotbeds of activity were.

Well Linearis will be heading your way soon GG. Prepare to update the Heat map :)

-David

Haha, maybe I can at least make a little map with little stick pins representing where each of my Hoyas come from. I'm imagining yarn connecting the plant's point of origin >> to the home of the trader/vendor >> to my home.

Although, no doubt it would end up looking like that room in "Heroes."

You are one crazy dude. Good crazy of course.

Got to thinking about the age of some of our plants if we could trace our cuttings back to the source. My sis gave me some offsets of Haemanthus albiflos 10 years ago that was given to her by an old gal that lives in Sointula, a coastal BC community that was settled by the Finnish in the early 1900's. Word is that the plant was 'brought over'. They aren't a chatty lot, so we were left to assume that it was brought then.

I had a Xmas cactus that was my grandmothers. When I moved cities, I gave it to the ex-boyfriend's ma. What an idiot thing to do. First off it was hands down the loveliest and most perfectly formed flower I'd seen on a Xmas cactus, and secondly that plant would now be 75 years old. It literally had a woody trunk. That plant was like an Elder. It had seen and heard things I can only imagine. Well never mind me, I'm getting sentimental now.

I hadn't thought of it from an age perspective (which I like), but I think the idea of a single specimen living on as clones around the world is fascinating. The continuity of a single lifeform is very cool conceptually. And the idea of it adapting from the cloud forests of Fiji to a thousand improbable landscapes.

Love the idea of the cactus elder. I am not lucky enough to have any plants older than me, but if I did, I think my inclination would indeed be to treat it as a respected matriarch. You know, "Easy there, grandmother. I am just bringing you inside. I am sorry to disturb you. Oh! The doorframe I'm so sorry I'm really so sorry. Here we are now, would you like me to bring you some VF-11?"

I hadn't thought of it from an age perspective (which I like), but I think the idea of a single specimen living on as clones around the world is fascinating. The continuity of a single lifeform is very cool conceptually. And the idea of it adapting from the cloud forests of Fiji to a thousand improbable landscapes.

Love the idea of the cactus elder. I am not lucky enough to have any plants older than me, but if I did, I think my inclination would indeed be to treat it as a respected matriarch. You know, "Easy there, grandmother. I am just bringing you inside. I am sorry to disturb you. Oh! The doorframe I'm so sorry I'm really so sorry. Here we are now, would you like me to bring you some VF-11?"

Exactly!

That old cactus would produce blooms once a year, or take a year off depending on how it had been treated. When it did bloom, we were expected to coo and admire them. 'Not easy to bloom at my age after all!' Then it would convalesce for the next 11 months.

Too funny. Now I'm laughing. Thanks.

Klyde, lovely story!
You are so right about us Finns not being a chatty lot. I know i'm not, anyway, but there are lots of exeptions to the rule.
The name Sointula is just beautiful. Crudely translated it would be Chordville or Harmonyville. I didn't know about this (previously) idealistic community, and had never seen Haemanthus albiflos, but I like it! It seems that somehow it found its way to Finland from South Africa, and was en vogue here just at that time -- in the early 1900's. Very interesting, thanks.

My mom will pass on some 30+ year old plants to me soon. She needs to thin out her collection in the next 5 years. She has about 3 CC/TC that are over 30. She has a cactus that blooms huge white flowers every year and is about 9 feet tall. This one is over 40 years old and she tell the story of how she received it in a teacup as a cutting before my oldest brother was born. I also think there may be one or two more in the bunch over 30 years. I unfortunately do not know much of my family history prior to my parents.

-David

Adoption is the word here. Take them on and keep them for life (and love them and hug them and hold them and squeeze them and call them...). They deserve that much for enriching our lives for that many years.

kukka: Well there you go. Thanks for confirming what I only suspected about the plant and its origins. That's what I have then, an immigrant plant. I just knew that plant was trying to tell me something.

Sointula is still very much a thriving community. Some people leave, but not many. They do lovely handicrafts (especially with beautiful wools, and honeybees I believe). I think it is beyond neat how people can emigrate to a new country and generations later retain so much of their culture. I heard one Scottish actor who had come to Canada and was filming in some coastal community in the East somewhere (forgot where). The accent, parts of speech, songs and customs were still very similar to what he had back home, and these people had been in Canada for 100 to 150 years. How cool is that?

Kelly V

Well, thanks to everyone's generous advice and David's solicitous care, 4 generous cuttings of linearis safely made it to their destination. They look so fresh they hardly even need a soak, but I'm giving them a couple hours anyway just to err on the safe side.

The package actually arrived slightly crushed, in a bag with an apology from the USPS, but the linearis never noticed because of its protective newspaper sheath. I've had this happen before with packages I've shipped, I think because the moisture softens the cardboard a bit, but the slightly damp wrapping paper definitely provides the perfect moisture without sogginess, so it still seems worth it.

Thanks, David! ^_^

GG,
Never mind the trip! Did the linearis survive Zeno's stare?

LOL I showed that picture to my guy and he was like: I don't think linearis really got to be the subject of that photograph. And I was like: Pffft these people already know what linearis looks like, quit giving me crap.

Ooooooo generous cuttings! You are gonna love that plant.