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Keep wax plant close by
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Outdoors is a good place
for most houseplants in summer, in a half-shady corner near the
house, watered and fertilized as needed but otherwise ignored. One
houseplant you might not want to let out is hoya, also known as wax
plant.
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For one thing, the plant is so
pretty -- its thick, waxy leaves gracefully twisting and turning --
you'll enjoy it inside. You can leave hoya at a bright window even
in summer because its fleshy leaves hold moisture, so the plant does
not demand frequent watering.
If it's kept inside, you can
best enjoy its flowers, too. Each spray of blossoms is composed of
20-or-so small flowers clustered together on short stalks. An
individual blossom looks like a small flat star pressed atop a
larger flat star -- both of them in texture and color seemingly
molded from tallow. That tallowy color is tinged pink in the smaller
star, deepening to red toward the center of each flower. The flowers
seem to appear all of a sudden; you might not even notice any flower
buds. (Contrast this habit with gardenia, whose prominent buds sit
frustratingly for weeks and weeks before they finally decide to
open.)
Indoors is also where you'll be able to fully drink
in the flowers' heady aroma. The scent is not one that fills a room,
but if you press your nose right up against the blossoms, close your
eyes, and inhale, you'll find yourself in a chocolate factory!
The main ingredient in getting hoya to flower is patience.
Periodic dry spells won't hurt the plant, nor will keeping it
cramped in the same pot year after year. Light is needed, but not an
excessive amount. Even a cool east window suffices, and provides the
coolness the plant likes in winter, when it also must have dryness.
One note of caution with hoya: The flowers form on short
growths, called spurs, that grow off older stems. So don't prune the
plant unless you absolutely must, and never cut off the spent
flowers or you could accidentally cut the spur. Because the plant
flowers repeatedly on older stems, you can look forward to a hoya
plant bearing more and more flowers as it grows older.
The
curious name hoya, incidentally, has nothing to do with the "Hoyas"
sports teams of Georgetown University. Wax plant was named after
Thomas Hoy, who was a gardener to the Duke of Northumberland in the
second half of the 18th century.
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