Mine actually started with a cutting from a friend from her grandmother's 100 year old Hoya. I no longer have it, and it makes me a little sad, but I now have about 50 different Hoyas, which makes me feel a little better. lol Mine grows almost weekly, or as often as I am able to put some money aside for it.I have an ever-growing wish list, so this may go on for quite some time! lol Good luck with growing your very own collection! Which do you have right now? I'm always interested in learning about other people's collections!

Deborah

I have one eriostemma,or close to it, I had some help identifing it on here. I also have two publicalyx and I beleive Im getting two more pub cuttings from a friend.

Mine came from a boyfriend in high school, a Valentine's day gift in 1977. (He later became my husband, then my ex...) I now have in the neighborhood of 130 different species in addition to a couple hundred succulents.

Denise in Omaha

I had a Hoya carnosa that I never really figured out and I suppose I was drawn to that plant because I had seen a few nice specimens but never a flower. At the time I was pretty much only growing Orchids. I received a mystery box of cuttings one day from a Canadian woman I had traded with before and in it were cuttings of Hoya DS-70 which rooted and then sat there for the longest time. About three years later that DS-70 plant flowered and that started my Hoya collecting. I have been pretty much enthralled with Hoyas ever since and I am at the point that some of my non performing orchids are probably going to end up in the society auction this winter to make way for more Hoyas.
I don't think I should count my Hoyas (denial lol) but there are almost 200 species in my collection right now.

Mike

My obsession with hoyas started in '97 or so. I was on the gardenweb.com houseplant forum. I owned other houseplants at the time. I would frequently hear about 'hoya', a plant I never heard of on that board (this was before they created this hoya page).

So one day I decided to check my local nursery if they had one. And they did - Hoya Kerri. I fell instantly in love with the heart-shaped leaves. After I bought that one, I just had to have more. So over the years I purchased hoya plants and cuttings from Rainbow Gardens in Vista, CA, Kartuz also in Vista, Glasshouse Works in Ohio(?), Carol Noel in Hawaii and someone named Green in Hawaii, ebay and private parties.

TammyPie

Wow, Denise! That makes me feel better about my measly 50 or so! lol I just got a couple of Eriostemmas, and I think I'm in love!:D

I started my collection last year, after discovering that was hundreds of different hoyas on the world!

I always had carnosa, which is common in Brazil, but here we only have few species, so all my hoyas came from other countries.

Now I think I have around 60 species, but never see a single flower because they are small yet. And I'm planning to have as much as possible. Hoyas became my most important passion in my life!

Mitzi

Tammy,lol...my addiction pretty much started the way yours did, I think I was on the FL forum or container forum and saw a few post about Hoyas and not knowing what they were decided to do a little more research and found out there was a Hoya Forum, that was around January 2008 (my addiction is quickly approaching 4 years!)...nowhere near some of you Veteran collectors out there. Purchased my first hoya from Lowe's and EA Krimson princess. It only got worse from there...especially after I found out there are hundreds of different varieties out there. I don't see this addiction ending anytime soon :o)

Interesting thread, I think its neat to see how everyone's addiction started.

My sister in law gave me a piece of her bella... (for years I always liked growing things inside and out) My mother had an old carnosa that she had for years, actually she had 2, a really big one and a smaller one - she gave me one... and because of the internet I decided to research the carnosa - thinking that was really the only variety... well was I mistaken.... years ago when I started with house plants they didnt have the internet and all these ways of researching.... after I had found out about all these lovely hoyas - well I started to order a few... and it never stops - I did the same thing with my african violets - started with one and did some research and just kept collecting...

My obsession with hoya started about 10 years ago when I discovered Gardenweb forums. I was mainly into regular houseplants when someone started a round robin. I joined and received two hoya in the RR. One was H. carnosa and the other was H. australis 'keysii'. That started me off. I now have about 40 plants. I thank the generous members from this forum, DG, Epiforums and other forums thru the years. I also purchased from Bob Smolley, Ted Green, Rob's Violets and private members here. I had quite alot more, but most of my larger leaved hoya froze this past winter. I'm slowly trying to replace them. My 'want list' grows every time someone post a picture. I love the patterned leaf and large leaf varieties. I can look at the leaves and then wait for flowers.

Mike, I love that you refuse to count your Hoyas. I just allow my perception of what is "a lot" to shift over time. When I started, 10 was a lot. Now, I figure as long as I have less than David and Patrick, I can keep acquiring more. That makes sense, right?

My story is sooooooooooooooooo boring but I'll tell it anyway.

CHAPTER ONE My oma passed carnosa cuttings onto my mom and my mom passed cuttings onto me. I never noticed my oma's plant, but my mom kept hers small and so only SHE noticed when it bloomed and she never mentioned it to the rest of us. So, I just thought it was a pretty flowerless houseplant vine.

CHAPTER TWO After my Bromeliad phase, I got into Gesneriads and one day on the Violet Barn website, I noticed their Hoya section and I was like: wtf, there is more than one of these? I told my mom about my discovery (also that they had flowers) and she goes (all innocent-like): "Oh, haven't I ever shown you mine's flowers? Look, it's in bloom now."

CHAPTER THREE I innocently decided to "collect them all" having no conception of what that meant. I stumbled onto GardenWeb about I started collecting in 2009. Two years later, I have just over 170.

This addict has agreed to to be filmed for a documentary on addiction. She does not know that there is going to be an intervention...

/cue music

I too started collecting hoyas after a ginger trade gone wrong. A lady wanted to trade gingers and I agreed and sent her a few nice plants. What I got was a box with 7 hoya cuttings, I had no idea what kind of plants I had gotten, but right off the bat I was attracted to the foliage. This was over eight years ago, now I have over 200 diffrent hoyas. I stopped counting. I also have 7 of my own crosses. One flowered this year, the others are still to small. I just discoved a seed pod on my hoya kerri(hairy) really excited to see how the foliage on the cross turns out.

ROFL Did she mix up your box with a box for someone else?

What crosses do you have? That's so interesting!

ricfl,
that is soo cool that you can cross hoyas. I didn't think you could do that. What is that weirdest cross that you have ever gotten?
I see pictures have all the wonderful hoyas that everyone outs up here and have started a wish list that already seems miles long. I can't wait until I have something to trade with or the money to buy.

~Melissa

You can, and in the thread Mitzi posted about Hoya seeds, Mike provides some information on how its done.

Here's an example:

Hoya cv Joy

Parent 1: Hoya vitellina

Parent 2: An unidentified species from Laos (Hoya sp. Laos) but idk which one, other than that it was in Michael Miyashiro's (Hawaii) collection.

You can clearly see the difference between its leaves and those of vitellina, though. There are also some more common examples, like Mathilde & Chouke (carnosa x serpens), Minibella (carnosa x shepherdii) or Sunrise (lacunosa x obscura) among others.

Here is a link that might be useful: Some Hoya cultivars

That's really cool. Thanks for the info, GG!

I resisted for a long time. My first hoya was a Krimson Queen that I found at a church sale when some of my friends and I in college wandered by to check it out. I think I got a handmade pot with saucer, a couple sweaters, a peperomia, and that Krimson Queen. My friend and I had an unofficial competition to be the one to grow the most plants in our dorm windows (which were huge, by the way), which was fun until I had to move back home. I ended up giving a bunch of plants away because my parents started getting antsy about trying to fit them in the minivan. I gave up growing plants for a number of year afterwards, and took it back up when I moved to Philadelphia and had a gardening neighbor.

When I split with my sunshine hating ex, that's when the plant collection really took off, mainly African violets and orchids. Those are both super addicting as it is, so I scrupulously avoided any other addicting plant groups. I eyed that hoya forum, but stayed away. Then I got a kentiana (turned out to be wayetti) from Glasshouse Works as a random add-on, and it grew nicely for me. And I found that I really missed my Krimson Queen all those years ago. So I traded for some cuttings of hoyas, I said whatever you feel like, I'm not picky, and that is where it all started. It was totally downhill from there.

I love it, sunshine hating ex! LOL! If my boyfriend hated sunshine or plants we would have a big problem. Good thing he doesn't mind me having so many plants around our apartment. I started with african violents, then moved on to orchids about winter last year. It was at the orchid show that I discoverd a vender with hoyas.

Denise, do you still have that hoya from the '77 cutting from your bf/dh/ex?

TammyPie

My first introduction to a hoya plant was at grandmas house and it was a huge hindu rope. That was many years ( well over 30) ago and no I didn't get a cutting of her plant and it eventually died!!!

About 10 years ago I saw a nice specimen of the same plant ( a hindu rope) at Lowes and decided to buy it as it brought back memories of my grandmas plant.Then while doing an online search for some other type of plant, I forget what it was, I found a site that just happened to have a few hoya pages on it. At the time I had no idea that there was any other hoyas in the world other than the rope.

BOY did me accidentally finding those pages create a monster!!! So for me it all began about 10 years ago with a single hindu rope in a 6" basket to what I have now. I currently have 4 outstanding orders in the works and if everything from those orders arrives,and roots, I will have in the neighborhood of 510 hoyas in my collection.

So for those of you who are still fairly new to hoya collecting let me tell you from my own personal experience here. Hoya collecting is like crack. That first hit and you're done,you're hooked and there's no getting off of it!!!

Just in case anyone is wondering. I'm not now, nor have I ever been or plan to be a crackhead but I do watch TV so I have some idea of what it's like!!!

My Hubbie brought a carnosa home from college (clipping). Of course it was a huge plant when I married him and after about 5 years of marriage it bloomed in a really big way (maybe 75 blooms). It was the wildest thing I'd ever seen. I was into Phalaenopsis at the time with the odd Doritaenopsis.

I used to shop at Art Knapps Plantland on Lougheed Hwy in Burnaby and someone used to bring in rooted cuttings in 4 inch green pots with hand-lettered signs (like 1997 or so?). Without Google, I had no idea of what the blooms were like, but got an idea of the variability of the Genus.

Then, I saw Hoya bella and was hooked. Someone sent me a cutting from Abbottsford (you know who you are and I'm still grateful). It's been nonstop for about 3 years now. I have severe space limitiations so I only have about 20. I've donated quite a few to the local Butterfly World as I explore what works best for my home and interest.

If you were the person who used to take in those rooted cuttings to Art Knapps, I sure would like to chat about that!