cv..cultivar

aff..alike

sp..species

pubicalyx? Came from Philippines..I think it's type of Hoya. Like Hoya pubicalyx Red button or Hoya carnosa grey ghost.

Robin, it's always good to put these out there for newbies, so thanks for asking... Cultvars (cv.) are plants that have been cultivated by selective breeding. For example, a plain old carnosa produces a variegated vine.. Now I have no idea how this happens, but my understanding is that if you whack it off and root it away from the parent plant and it continues to produce variegated growth, now you have a cultivar, like 'Krimson Queen'.

"Aff." indicates related to or similar to. It's short for "affinis". So if we have a Hoya that we're not 100% sure is the actual species, we use "aff." to indicate that it is close to this species. I grow one called Hoya aff. fischeriana, which I guess means "maybe it's a not-so-typical clone of fischeriana, or maybe it's just a very close, yet unnamed species..."

"Sp" is short for species. I hope someone can explain exactly why this term is used because I don't fully understand it. I mean, carnosa is a species, yet we do not say "Hoya sp. carnosa." BUT, we do use the term with some... Usually (maybe always?) it's a name of a place or maybe a name or a number. For example, I grow one called H. sp. Chicken Farm. I grow one called H. sp. MPR02. I hope someone can explain the "sp." before these names...

And pubicalyx is a species with several cultivars. HTH...

Denise in Omaha

Jan and Denise - thank you so much. To cultivar - does this also mean cross pollination? Do some breeders try to change flower smell or color on a carnosa?

Robin

I think that cultivars can be either crosses between two Hoyas or naturally occurring mutations of a species.

Denise in Omaha

Can you tell me who is the keeper of the names of these plants? Who decides wither it is a natural occurring mutation or a new kind of hoya (variety or specie)? I saw a website that listed the "confidence" of weather plants applied for new names were actually new plants or just variations of others.

I am so sorry I do not know the correct terminology yet - so makes my question hard to answer. I will go out on the internet and look for the website. still curious who is "king" of the plant names.

Robin