Hooked on Hoyas!
Foreigners are going crazy over our rare Philippine Hoyas. In fact, thesetropical gems are sold in the internet for as high as US$75/cutting. AreFilipinos getting hooked on Hoyas, too?
In pictures, our endemic and indigenous Philippine Hoyas look deceptive. They appear as large as the vandas and cattleyas. In reality, they’re even smaller than rose buds. But that is all part of the whole Hoya allure. Like rare, expensive gems or stars in the sky, they shine and upstage even the most colorful and gigantic flowers.
Hoya belongs to the Aslepiadaceae family. It was discovered in i8io by botanist Robert Brown who named this waxy plant after his fellow botanist Thomas Hoy. Scientists say Hoyas are for most part epiphytic vines with milky sap and opposite, waxy leaves. Some Philippine species are bushes and shrubs. Other species have showy clusters of flowers with lemony scent. Also known as “Gap Plants” Hoyas grow best in places called “gaps in the forests” like streams, creeks, trails and ridge tops.
Dr. Monina Siar, researcher at the Institute of Plant Breeding, University of the Philippines at Los Banos (IPB, UPLB) is one of the very few Hoya experts in the country. So hooked is she on Hoyas that one specie, called the Hoya Siariae was named after her. “Hoyas have been with us for a long, long time, ” Dr. Siar explained. “We just didn’t pay attention to them. The first person to really have interest in this is Rey Pimentel, a plant breeder who used to be my colleague in IPB. When he went on early retirement, I continued his work.”
What really drove Dr. Siar to assiduously study the exotic Philippine Hoyas aside from their aesthetic value is the foreigners’ cashing in on our very own rare ornamental. “You wouldn’t believe how our Hoyas are advertised and sold in the internet. All the descriptions would say they are native plants from the Philippines. And they sell the cuttings between $US20 and US$75 each depending on their rarity. They really come here to collect in our forests. Some collectors smuggle the plants out of the country and grow them in controlled high-tech greenhouses in the US. So I said, this is unfair! Hoyas are supposed to be national treasures and it’s the foreigners who are making money out of our riches. We might as well cash in on it.”
Since then, Dr. Siar started her personal collection of Hoyas-almost 200 species all in all. “But some of them are duplicates,” she clarified. “I have around loo species.” Explaining further, the cheerful scientist said we now have 61 species of Hoyas named and described from the Philippines. “We want the Institute of Plant Breeding to be the center of Hoya germplasm,” she emphasized. “Even though they are abroad and are sold over the internet, we should be the ones who should have the advantage and the leverage to grow and sell them.”
Aside from collecting, Dr. Siar is also working on the hybridization of Hoyas. “I have not yet been successful, but you know, making a hybrid really takes time.” In between laboratory work, she does a lot of library research on the Hoyas and is also an active member of the International Hoya Association based in the US.
It was while looking for information on the waxy plants that Dr. Siar met and had an intellectual bonding with the world-renowned Robert Dale Kloppenberg, a noted authority on Hoyas. Married to a Filipina, Kloppenberg met Dr. Siar and his wife in the Philippines and soon, both experts were sharing information via email. “He is 86 years old and are felt that time is running short,
so he sent his entire library of materials on Hoyas to me. I have now a treasure trove of information on Hoyas!” To this day, Klop-penberg and Dr. Siarcontinue to communicate. In fact, it was Kloppenberg who named the newly discovered species after Dr. Siar’s name.
It seems that Dr. Siar’s efforts are paying off, for as she herself has proclaimed, there is already a growing number of Hoya enthusiasts who are starting their own collection. “In specialty gardens, these already sold between Php200 and Php300 per cutting,” she said. “Most of the collectors come from the Laguna area. The latest to have been bitten by the Hoya bug is no less than our national scientist, Dr. Ben Vergara. Every now and then, he sends me a text message. I have a new Hoya. Come so you can identify it.”
Hoyas, according to Dr. Siar, are easy to grow. ‘They’re just cuttings, so you just have to chop them off and hang them. They’re easy to root. Yung mga three to four node cuttings, maganda na ‘yun.
The most common disease that attacks them are the aphids. We just spray them and use normal fertilization. And because they come from the rainforests, they should be shaded although many can survive under full sunlight.”
Now that Philippine Hoyas are slowly becoming part of the tropical ornamental landscape, more Filipinos are getting interested to grow and sell these rare, exotic plants. For this new breed of ornamental plant hobbyists who already got hooked on Hoyas, they have Dr. Monina Siar to be thankful for.
September 19th, 2008 at 2:27 am
Where in Bohol are Hoyas abundant? I would really like to know this in case I might run into a few of these beautiful plants someday.