Cart
0
0.00 €
My experience growing different varieties of hoya Lacunosa
09/04/2026
At the dawn of my passion for growing hoyas😊, hoya Lacunosa was at the very bottom of my wish list. I was a fan, I was excited, I only saw hoyas with large leaves, with veined and splashed (colored areas) leaves, hoyas with wavy leaf edges and with a thick or fluffy texture, but hoya Lacunosa is the absolute opposite – the leaves are small and for some Lacunosa varieties even very small, all slightly or even strongly ribbed, splashes may or may not be present, the flowers are small (although most are fragrant, which I still think is important) and especially maybe not even breathtaking (but how do you look at it😊), respectively, hoya Lacunosa seemed to me a simple, quite ordinary vine and a hoya that did not attract my attention at all.
But then – I read something somewhere, or saw something somewhere, or smelled something and everything started happening… I received the first two hoya Lacunosa varieties in January 2025 as unrooted two-leaf cuttings and both went to hoya paradise very quickly for various reasons. However, the next four, which came to me in February 2025 as rooted cuttings with several leaves and leaf nodes, are still in my collection and I can finally say with confidence that they will continue to be, because all my experiments (read, my attractions:)) have survived and even the extra cuttings that I took in time are growing. In May 2025, I decided to buy two varieties of hoya Lacunosa again, as unrooted single-leaf cuttings, currently there is only one left – hoya Lacunosa Violet, which is still struggling to "be or not" in my collection and has finally reached 3 leaf nodes and 8 leaves.
In total, I currently have 15 varieties of hoya Lacunosa in my collection (including hoya Krohniana black, which is very similar to hoya Lacunosa), some hoyas grow with better success, but some are still quite small and fragile, because it turned out that it is not so easy (at first) to grow hoya Lacunosa … you have to get used to hoya Lacunosa … and you also have to be able to sell yourself to her. It seems that the same principles work as for most hoyas, but if 1 or 2 leaves are enough for a large-leaved hoyas for the cutting to take root and start growing relatively smoothly (we are talking about easy-to-grow hoyas - Callistophylla, Finlaysonii, Pubicalyx, etc., read the blog post about easy-to-grow hoyas here), then the Lacunosa hoyas needs 2-3 nodes with several leaves so that you can expect a relatively quick positive result. In general, the Lacunosa hoyas wants a cooler temperature - it grows calmly if the temperature regime is from 5*-20* Celsius. If it is hotter, the Lacunosa hoyas will grow, but the growth vigor will decrease. Hoya Lacunosa also wants constant moisture for its small roots, but when grown in a self-watering system (which, in my opinion, is the best option for growing hoya Lacunosa), watering should be done from the top of the pot so that the hoya Lacunosa cutting grows proper roots, and the roots should also be given a little breath after watering, drying the roots a little (but again not all of them!), at a later stage you can already maintain regular moisture. The very first thing that immediately comes to mind when talking about hoya Lacunosa is the fact that at first almost all hoya Lacunosa varieties start relatively slower than larger-leaved hoyas, and you need a lot of patience (and also a magnifying glass so that you can see those small flourishing leaves) until hoya Lacunosa has grown properly, and then the hoya will forgive you some agrotechnical sins more easily😊, will grow smoothly and will be able to take its place of honor in the list of easy-to-care-for hoyas.
This patience at the very beginning of cultivation for most hoya Lacunosa varieties was what I lacked – I thought that if I didn't see growth, then I had to change the substrate (repot again) or move it to another place (give it more light or vice versa) or maybe there was not enough fertilizer and I needed to give it more (as a result, several leaves were damaged), etc., etc., but … in general, at the beginning, hoya Lacunosa should be given the minimum needs and then be patient and wait. If you have purchased a cutting with a couple of leaves and one node, then the waiting time will be longer and you need to understand this from the very beginning (oh, I'm impatient😊). But if you get a hoya Lacunosa variety that is already rooted, with several leaves and shoots, then the further growth process is relatively simple and fast.
And also – not all hoya Lacunosa varieties are challenging. There are some that root easily and grow easily even as unrooted cuttings, such as, in my experience, the hoya Lacunosa Autumn Blush. Although for the record, I should say that I received a cutting with 2 nodes and 6 leaves, which is probably why this hoya rooted so well and continued to grow smoothly, compared to some other hoya Lacunosa varieties that came as unrooted 2-leaf (or even 1-leaf) cuttings.
In summary about hoya Lacunosa – this is a very wide species of hoya, there are really a lot of hoya Lacunosa varieties at the moment and new ones are constantly being added. However, it seems that the self-watering system is the right direction for growing these hoyas, and compared to large-leaved hoyas, hoya Lacunosa can be slow to start, but when hoya Lacunosa grows properly, you can quickly get a beautiful, bushy, fragrant and grateful vine in your indoor flower collection.
Below are some photos from my collection of hoya Lacunosa of some varieties at different stages of development at different times: