> Take cuttings and trash the rest?

How 'bout take cuttings and DON'T trash the rest? :-) It'll maximize chances of success.

From the description sounds like you should be able to rescue a good part of that plant. EA Hoya baskets include A LOT of rooted cuttings, and so even if some die, many will be left.

A picture would help in giving more specific advice.

You'd probably want to change the mix (as many of us do) if you keep the original potting as EA uses a great deal of peat & many of us have trouble w/ their mix.

I recently brought home the same plant from HD. I was advised here not to repot an EA hoya, unless the plant seemed to be in distress, so I've left it ... aside from prying off the bottom tray of the pot so it will dry out faster. I'll give it the winter to acclimate to its new home, then put it in a new pot next spring.

I also brought home two smaller curly leaf rope hoyas, and repotted them together before coming here and reading about finicky EA plants; it seems to be chugging along. No major growth ... but it's not dying, either!

I'd suggest removing parts that are really damaged, as well as pruning back some of the newer growth, and maybe it will promote a little branching out and filling in up near the crown.

Good luck, Alexis!

This post was edited by Danielle317 on Thu, Oct 10, 13 at 14:15

Thank you for responding, everyone!

Here's a photo of the plant in question.

See how the crown is stripped of leaves?
I'm not too familiar with Hoya growth. Will they resprout leaves on bare parts of the vine? Will entirely new vines sprout from the crown/soil and fill out?

This post was edited by AlexisS on Thu, Oct 10, 13 at 15:45

I'm amazed at how resiliant some Hoyas are. Winter of 2011/12, my HUGE H. australis ssp. tenuipes started to lose it's leaves. By spring, I'd taken a lot of cuttings to salvage what I could, and pretty much every leaf was gone on the mother plant. I whacked off all the dead vines and tossed them, then put the raggedy pot of whacked back stems outside when spring came, figuring I'd see what happened and probably would be tossing it by winter to use the very nice ceramic pot for something else. Well, after about 2 months of sitting there doing nothing, heck if it didn't start pumping out all kinds of new growth from all those "dead" stems!

I always save a pot until it is clear nothing is going to grow, but I would take cuttings, too.

Denise in Omaha

Alexis, check out these threads:
http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/hoya/msg090019167294.html
http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/hoya/msg0921115413324.html
http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/hoya/msg100027501688.html

People gave me some good advice there about hoya wayetii and another one from Exotic Angel, and I've also learned a lot and reported stuff there that I believe will be useful to you.

> I'd suggest removing parts that are really damaged

I wouldn't - not for this particular plant. Some of my H. wayetii leaves have mechanical damage from the store and more that I've added (leaves getting caught under the pot or between the pot and the wall or whatever). Part of the leaf dries out to a crisp, but the rest of the leaf looks green and healthy on this plant - and those leaves are doing their photosynthesis job for the plant. You can snip off the ugly parts for cosmetic reasons later when it's clear the plant will survive, but for now every functioning part counts, I think.

> See how the crown is stripped of leaves?

As long as the stem itself is alive and the conditions are right, new leaves and vines will come out of the nodes and the existing vines will get longer. I do not see new growth on my wayetii coming out of the ground - it all comes out of the existing nodes and on the new vines. My plan is to fill out the plant more with its own cuttings once the vines get longer than I want them to be.

Give it a lot of light - maybe not direct sun right now as it is recovering (although it's fall, so "direct sun" ain't what it used to be). You will see in the threads I've linked how important I found light to be in my experiments on this and other hoya.

I am debating whether to suggest to bag this plant. Perhaps somebody else can chime in on this. Bagging (or enclosing into a container with clear plastic top) helps it preserve more moisture and grow some roots quicker. But there are fewer leaves now on the plant than it was used to supporting - so maybe loss of moisture through leaves is not gonna be a problem here. Anyone?

If you do bag it, note that it will need significantly less water in that case. Leave holes in the bag, air it out periodically and watch for stale smells.

Keep us posted on how it does. I am personally very optimistic from the looks of it that you'll be able to save many of those vines.