It doesn't matter that much. I personally find it easier to wait until it has finished dying back and I can neatly trim away the dry plant matter.

Congratulations on your new acquisition! ^_^

I just thought I could save the rest of the growing stem. It won't continue to die back all the way down the plant then?

Thank you!

No, it shouldn't. Hoya growing tips sometimes die back a few nodes when it's experiencing some shock, like from being rooted, transported or having its environment changed in other ways. I also do not trim it back until it becomes crystal clear where the dead/dry tissue ends and good stem begins - then it snips off easily.

Do not trim back to healthy green tissue like you hear with some other problems like rot or fungus - 'cause this is not rot or fungus.

It was just stressed by being cut and shipped, so it is abandoning that little segment of new growth. It won't continue to die back! :)

That section of vine that is yellow will shrivel up and die, but the rest of the plant (everything below that node) will be fine. Even if you never did anything, the plant would (when it was ready) just start a new vine from that green node, and grow around the dead stuff.

It's still just a baby plant, so be more-careful-than-average not to over/under water it. Other than that, you have nothing to worry about.

It is a funny thing about growing tips. I am a very neat and tidy guy when it comes to my plants, and I hate dead vines and growing tips as well as any yellow leaves. Every once and again, I will cut off what I think is a crunchy dead growing tip and white sap will spurt out. This happened last night with a long vine on H. hypoplasia, which led to some inappropriate language:)

Doug

Yeah⦠I've had the same experience! Talk about aggravating!!

Well, if it looked dead on the outside, maybe it was going in that direction anyway?

You're welcome! :-)

(But seriously, once the outer layers of a vine are dead, it's not coming back to life, is it?)

I'm sorry but my last post disappeared. I wanted to thank you all for your answers.

Doug, I've not experienced the white sap spurting. What does that mean? The stem wasn't dead?

Yes Jewels,

The stem looked dead and was mixed up with other vines and when I cut it off, it was still very much alive. To make matters worse, I saw a small new growth coming out from the vine after I had already pruned it.

Yeah, sometimes brown vines can be real sneaksters...

What also gets to me is when I am trimming off some dead plant matter and I think I am far enough away from the good end node, and then the dang thing starts oozing sap.

It's the same as when you're clipping your pet's toenails and you cut them too short and they start bleeding and nail you with that long-suffering I-trusted-you-and-look-what-you-just-did! look.

Doug, I am gathering seeing the white sap is bad for the plant? I am learning as you can tell. :) It's so interesting to me.

GG, hahaha poor puppy!
So it's best to just leave all those growing ends alone and see if they start growing again?

(( Sorry, I was being confusing! ))

We all agree that you should wait until the yellow segment is brown and dry and then snip it off. :) :)

I was just explaining that, in theory you *could* leave it on because it makes no difference to the plant. But your plant will look prettier if you remove dead stuff. And it doesn't hurt the plant, once the piece is dead.

Regardless of what you do, the plant will definitely start growing again. Probably from that node beneath the growing tip, but it could decide to grow from a different one. Plants have a mind of their own.

Everyone makes their plants bleed sap from time to time. It is unusual to prune Hoyas, so it's usually when we are taking cuttings. Although some Hoyas will bleed very easily, like from a thousand pin-prick-points when you bend a vine, or from the petiole when you bend a leaf⦠or knock it off.

It's just like when a person bleeds - the wound scabs up and they're just fine, but every time you open the skin, you make the body more vulnerable to infection. So, although the risk is very small, especially with parts of the plant that are above soil, we obviously avoid it when possible. And if you're a softie like me, you feel like you've hurt the plant.

Plus, the sap is sticky and since most Hoyas have thick white sap (a handful, like carnosa, have clear sap) it gets on stuff and will stay there unless you wash it off⦠smeared on the vine or dripping onto other leaves⦠and even if you DO rinse it off, some Hoyas are heavy bleeders and just keep on and on for a while, so they inevitably end up with these crusty white sections. It's just one of those things that is NOT a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but can be mildly annoying lol.

And in Doug's case, of course, he accidentally cut off a healthy growing tip, which is never good, because then the plant has to start over making a new growing tip, and maybe it gets a little mad and does something more boring instead, like grow roots underground that you can't see, just to punish you. And you feel like a big idiot! And I'm humanizing the Hoya a lot in this example! But you feel me, right?

This post was edited by greedyghost on Thu, Jun 12, 14 at 15:52

I completely understand GG. Thank you for explaining further.