Hoya (Wax Plant) is a beautiful, evergreen vine-like plant that can be grown as a hanging pot or trailing plant. Its thick, dark green, shiny, and waxy leaves are why it’s called the Wax Plant. Its flowers are small, star-shaped, and bloom in clusters. These flowers are white or pale pink with a darker center and a mild fragrance. This plant thrives in low water, indirect bright light, and low humidity, making it a good indoor study plant.
Scientific Name: Hoya
Some Basic Information about Hoya (the hanging plants)
Habit: Evergreen, perennial climbing or trailing epiphytic herb. Stems can reach several meters when supported. Forms dense hanging clusters in pots
Root: Adventitious roots arise from nodes; act as clinging roots in nature, helping attachment to trees, fibrous, compact
Stem: Slender, flexible, cylindrical, green when young and later becoming woody, long vining shoots
Leaf: Opposite, simple, thick, leathery, and fleshy (succulent-like), ovate to elliptical, Leaves are glossy, dark green or variegated, prominent veins and a waxy surface
Inflorescence: Axillary umbels borne on persistent peduncles; each umbel may contain 10–50 flowers
Flower: Bracteate, complete, bisexual, actinomorphic. star-shaped, waxy, often fragrant; colors range from white to pink or red
Calyx: Sepals 5, small, free or slightly fused, with imbricate aestivation
Corolla: Petals 5, fused forming a star-like limb; thick and waxy; often reflexed
Corona: A characteristic inner whorl forming a raised star inside the corolla
Androecium: Stamens 5, fused to the corona; anthers form a central structure around the stigma
Gynoecium: Bicarpellary, syncarpous; superior ovary, with two carpels that later form paired follicles
Fruit: Paired follicles containing many seeds with tufts of silky hairs aiding wind dispersal
Systematic Position:
Division – Angiospermae
Class – Dicotyledonae
Order – Gentianales
Family – Apocynaceae
Genus – Hoya