Great information, I have veen interested in Doug's inperialis for some time. Eventually I may have to try it myself. I have a clone from Jan Sword thatchas done very well, and grown nicely since I got it as a cutting. Hers blooms well for her in sunny Florida, but I am not sure how it will adapt to Washington.

Yeah, imperialis is a tricky animal indoors. It likes lots of vertical space to spread out, lots of heat, humidity, air movement and sunlight everywhere. Good luck faking these conditions indoors, to trick it into thinking it's in Sumatra somewhere! :-/

Just as one example of a cultural factor - lights can give you lots of light, but not for a tall plant, not easily anyway. You'll have to MacGyver light fixtures vertically, all around the (ONE!) plant, or in a reflective tent, or some such thing. Ain't nobody got time for dat!

So, any time an otherwise demanding plant has a clone that is very tolerant of indoor conditions - that gets my attention for sure. (If I like the plant, that is.)

Lots of good points there. I did have grand plans of setting up a grow tent for mine, but seriously considering selling it at this point. If the university could ever get their mealy bug problem squashed I would donate it to their greenhouse. It is largely a matter of space, and when so many plants will do well in my conditions and bloom eagerly, it becomes a bit problematic. I could put a big Nepenthes ventrata in its current spot and have a much more interesting display!

You are completely right as for the clones though, this is clearly a good gene line and us Northern growers can use any advantage we can get!

Imperialis, in general, grows REALLY well for me. I have Palawan, Yellow, Mary's Cottage, Pink, var. Rauschii, Doug's clone, and IML 0245. Ihave had all for around a year, many of them are putting out peduncles (all but IML 0245), and Yellow was my first to bloom. It came from Jack (Epiphytica) last summer, as a rooted...maybe 7 inch cutting, and grew very fast. This spring, it bloomed...two blooms. Went to grab my camera...left plant room door open and suddenly... house panthers! No more blooms.

Aurorawa, what kind of set up do you have for yours? Lots of LED lighting?

I gave Doug a heads up, and he just said by email: "If you manage to bring those buds to maturity, I am almost certain that you will be the first person to flower my imperialis out of the 35, or so that I have managed to get into people's hands." So... I guess no pressure then, huh? :-)

Then, somebody on Facebook asked me how I got it to bud. So I might as well copy and paste this here, in case some people are wondering.

It still grows in Doug's mix in his 2.25" / 6 cm plastic pot, the way I got it a year ago. It's in one of my semi-hydro trays, so in order not to rot the roots, I set the pot in a larger pot with Growstones at the bottom, and filled the sides with Growstones as well. That tray is on a tile floor, and has been there all this time, including all winter long. It's the coolest space on my plant stand (because of both being at the bottom on the room and on the cool tile). I can't imagine that an imperialis clone would PREFER cool (it actually likes heat, as far as I know) - but I guess this clone is cool-TOLERANT rather than cool-preferring.

Humidity generally is an issue for me in the winter (it's too low), although this plant ended up smack in the middle of a bunch of other plants, all semi-hydro in growstones, so humidity was well-elevated there locally.

The plant lives very close (6 inches / 15 cm to tops of leaves of the initial cutting) to 2 T5 bulbs (well, closer to one bulb than the other, as it often happens). Now that the plant has grown, the top leaves are less than an inch / 2 cm away from the bulb - those leaves are burning, actually. The budding peduncle grows from that top node, so the light is VERY intense where it has budded.

This light likely also increased the daytime temps locally a bit on top of the plant (but again, the bottom has always been cool).

I've watered / fertilized weekly weakly for most of this year, except in the last 5-6 weeks I have really been lazy with watering / fertilizing, and often misted heavily (pure water / no fert) instead a couple times a week. I do not know if this played a role in the plant's bud setting. From reading about imperialis, I think it does require a lot of water - so perhaps this is another area where this clone is unusually TOLERANT rather than preferring dryer conditions.

> Went to grab my camera...left plant room door open and suddenly... house panthers! No more blooms.

Damn! I wonder if cat ragu tastes delicious. Sorry about the loss of buds, Aurora. Silver lining is, once a plant starts blooming, there's generally no stopping it, in my experience. Repeat buds / flowers will not be too far behind, I hope.

I don't think cat tastes particularly tasty. I have had cougar, not by choice, but by deception (had a jerk of a family member decide, who knew I love cats of all shapes and sizes, decide it would be funny to serve me some "venison"...it was cougar!). Tasted awful.

I have no clue why imperialis does so well for me. I literally give it no special care, other than providing it with more root room (it does prefer being less potbound). It grows outdoirs in the warm months, with plenty of water. In the cool months, it goes back inside under the same setup as my other hoyas.

I will let the pictures tell most of the remainder of the story. 5 days after the original 5-bud photo was taken, most buds blasted, and only one viable bud remained.

4 more days later. The bud is growing well:

A week later:

5 days later. There is some color now in the back of the bud:

And then just today after I came home... TADA!!! (3.5 weeks from the time I noticed the 5 buds.)

The plant is only one stem, 16 inches / 40 cm long. It's been 1 year and 19 days from when I got it from Doug (I got it as a rooted plant in a 2" pot; never repotted).

Of course, it decides to bloom when I just came back from my "Indoor Gardening Society" meeting. 12 hours earlier, and I would have taken it there and bragged about it like there was no tomorrow. :-) Maybe a reason to look forward to another flowering then.

Doug, you need to give this thing an accession number or a clonal name. It's a shame if this clone is just going to get lost among other imperialises.

Speaking of which, my other imperialis (IML 0245, mentioned in the original post) is in the active growth period. Is it growing buds? Don't be silly now, no, no, we can't have THAT. It's growing more vines. Yards and yards of vines. :-/

Forgot one more pic.

Wow that is beautiful!