PS-The Hoyan
Vol. 6, #2
May 2007
Hoya
longifolia Wall. ex Wight et Arn., (IML-906) – Photo by Christine M. Burton
(syn. Hoya stoneiana D.K. Kloppenb.).
Mr. Kloppenburg is at it again. After nearly a year of silence in issues of Fraterna, I was beginning
to hope the voodoo curses I’d put on him
had worked and that he had gotten another hobby but, I guess that was too much
to hope for.
Volume 19, #4 (2006), which is the
third to last issue, arrived here near the end of March, 2007. In it,
Kloppenburg was in overdrive. He
published at least 5 new species names and what appears to be an aborted
attempt to publish still another one.
This is by far the worst set of
publications I have ever seen. It
contains page after page, after page, after page, etc. of the poorest quality
pictures one could ever hope not to see, most of which aren’t even recognizable
as hoyas or even as hoya flower parts.
This, combined with his pigeon-toed-pig-Latin (my name for Latin words
that either don’t exist or are spelled wrong so that I can’t find them in my
numerous Latin dictionaries), gives one few clues as to just what many of his
species are.
His claim that the dried parts were
restored by his “Kew Solution” is utter rot.
I have the formula for the Kew Solution (which the people at Kew had
never heard of until Kloppenburg started “tooting” it as the great restorer of
dried flowers). It was given to me for
use in preserving fresh flowers without removing colour. It does a pretty good job of preserving but
it removes the colour and it surely doesn’t restore dried flowers to their
original state (nor anywhere close to it).
Proof can be seen on the 13 pages of pictures, which no one is ever going to recognize, if
anyone is ever optimistic enough to think a living species could be identified
by a comparison with these pictures. All
Kloppenburg and Wayman, his most devoted disciple, have accomplished is to
waste dues money. I can’t believe that
anyone would not have a complaint about paying dues for this issue.
A New Name for Old Hoya
In this issue, Kloppenburg named a hoya
for a person I call, “Arpita,” who has never contributed anything but confusion
to the world of hoyas and aggravation to those trying to do anything
constructive. I find Kloppenburg’s
choices of people to name hoyas for, extremely distasteful. It seems to me that if he can’t name them for
the people who made the original collections that the least he could do is name
them to honor people who have contributed something to the knowledge of the
species. I’d like to see one named for
David Liddle, Paul Forster, Michael Miyashiro, Chanin Thorut, David Goyder,
Obchant Thaithong, --- just to name a few but, Lord forbid that D.K.
Kloppenburg do the naming because I’d
like those people honored with a name that isn’t going to be sunk before the
ink is dry on the publication.
Kloppenburg says (page 19) that the
origin of this species is unknown. I
find that strange because I found it in David Liddle’s Accession catalog (dated
10 June 1991), listed as IML-906 and it says it is from “Nepal” via D.
Cumming. The Liddles have sold this as a
pubescent clone of Hoya longifolia for sixteen years. I believe that
identification is correct.
Let’s use Kloppenburg’s own pictures to
show why I believe that IML-906 is Hoya longifolia. Here is one he, himself, took of the
underside of a corolla lobe:
Above Left: This is the picture of the underside of a
corolla lobe, used by Kloppenburg on page 20 of this new publication.
Above Right: is a picture
taken by Kloppenburg of a glabrous, long, narrow leafed Hoya longifolia corolla
lobe. It was sent to me by Kloppenburg in 1988.
The date the film processor stamped on the back of the picture says
“Aug. 1988.” Kloppenburg labeled it Hoya
longifolia “Roll #32.” Difference in colour is due to film print’s age.
Above Left: From Fraterna, Kloppenburg’s picture of
the underside of a corolla “sinus.”
Above Right: Kloppenburg’s 1988 photo of a Hoya
longifolia corolla sinus. Also
shows the center of the flower which looks to me to be an exact match of the
underside’s center found on page 20 of the publication. I think this close enough to say that they
are the same species.
Above
Left: Kloppenburg’s 1988 picture of Hoya
longifolia.
Above Right: A George Slusser
picture of IML-906. The flowers
were dyed so that parts could be seen as the flowers had lost their colour due
to being preserved in alcohol.
Above Left: Kloppenburg’s 1988 picture of a corona’s
lower surface.
Above Right: IML-906’s corona, lower surface.
Kloppenburg did not furnish me a picture
of his Hoya longifolia pollinarium, so I am unable to compare one of
them with this species. I can, however,
compare a true IML-906 pollinarium with Kloppenburg’s mislabeled
pollinarium. Here it is: (Oh, I can also show you pictures of the
same pollinarium with the retinaculum tilted forward and with it tilted
back. In the forward position it looks
shorter; in the backward position it looks longer but in no position does it
look sharply pointed at the top as the one in Kloppenburg’s picture looks.
1 2 3 4
1). The pollinarium that
Kloppenburg placed on both pages 21 & 22, as this species, is
mislabeled. I call it a waste of dues
payers’ money to post a single picture two times in the same issue, especially
a mislabeled one.
2). This is a pollinarium of IML-906. The retinaculum in this one is tilted just
slightly forward..
3). This is a pollinarium of IML-906. The retinaculum in this one is tilted forward
so far that the tip is obscured..
4). This is a pollinarium of IML-906. The retinaculum in this one is in its natural
state, neither forward nor back.
Note, in picture #1, the different retinaculum shape, different
height; the much broader boarders on the outer margins of the pollinia and the
different shape of the pollinia tops.
Other errors made by Kloppenburg
in this name publication: (1). He said (in 2nd
paragraph) “Hoya longifolia Decaisne 1834 Contributions to the Botany of
absolutely nothing
to do with the publication of Hoya longifolia nor anything else that was published in Contributions
to the Botany of
Kloppenburg argues that the flowers are
the wrong size to be Hoya longifolia. It is important in describing plants to
cite approximate measurements but equally important that we recognize that those measurements are not exact. Only Kloppenburg will tell you that those
measurements are critical. Everyone else
knows better. The reason it is important to cite them is because pictures LIE. For example, in a picture it is easy to
mistake Hoya calycina for Hoya australis and Hoya
coronaria. In the 1970s and
1980s the two “biggie” hoya sellers in US sold Hoya calycina mislabeled
as Hoya
coronaria. That’s because they
looked at pictures and drawings sans measurement. Measurements are good to know, as long as we
know that they are only approximates.
I’d like to add too that unless
Kloppenburg has spent a fortune adding very sophisticated equipment to his
microscope since I saw his set up, “ain’t” no way he could take some of the
measurements he cites. I’d like to add, too, that he needs to learn how to
write the measurements he cites. It is very apparent in reading some of his
measurements that he often puts too many or too few zeros after the decimal
point.
Still more arguments: Kloppenburg said that this couldn’t be Hoya
longifolia because the leaves of it were rounded at their bases instead
of attenuate, but he illustrated it with a picture of a plant that clearly
shows that a very large proportion of its leaves quite narrow at their
bases. I have in front of me a picture
of the type specimen of Hoya longifolia. There are leaves of varying shapes
but there is a branch up near the left hand side at the top of the specimen,
with leaves that appear identical to those of IML-906 and they match,
exactly, the leaves in Kloppenburg’s picture on page 23 of this Fraterna.
He did not come out and flatly say that
the number of flowers per umbel were less than those
of Hoya
longifolia but I think he implied that by saying, “Mostly 5-8 flowers
per peduncle.”
The above pictures are of the clone
Kloppenburg considers to be “the” Hoya longifolia. Same number of flowers. Kloppenburg’s picture of the same clone has
many more but that doesn’t make it a different species. Hoyas simply do not always have the same
number of flowers in their umbels.
Fact:
The type specimen more closely matches IML-906. I would like to post a copy of it here but to
do so would violate the agreement between
Another New Name
Kloppenburg used up 8 pages to describe
a plant found on a dried herbarium specimen.
He gave the plant the name of Hoya linavergariae. I believe that this one will be quickly sunk
into synonymy with a species in another genus as soon as someone working with
that genus becomes aware of Kloppenburg’s new publication. Or, on the other hand, someone may decide to
move that other genus to the hoya genus.
Either way, I’m betting on a sinking!
The pictures he used to illustrate it aren’t much better than any of the
others in this issue but they are enough better that I could see a very strong
resemblance of the flowers to those of the Treutlera genus. The corona resembles that of Cathetostemma laurifolium and Stephanotis
floribunda.
Schlechter wrote that he thought that in
time, Treutlera might be made a section of the Hoya genus. So far no one has acted on that so it remains
a genus in its own right. However, I
think it very likely that this particular species was previously published as a
Treutlera.
If so, whatever name it has in that genus would prevail if it were moved to Hoya,
unless it duplicates an existing hoya name.
There is one thing I find extremely
distasteful in the name Kloppenburg chose for this plant. I feel (and I think a lot of other people
feel the same way) that if you name a hoya for a person, that person ought to
be the person who collected the type specimen or someone who contributed
greatly to hoya research projects, especially in the scientific sense. Per Kloppenburg, this hoya was collected by a
man named Andres Golamco, Jr., who sent it to a man named Ben Vergara. So Kloppenburg named it for Ben Vergara’s
wife, Lina Vergara, who (per Kloppenburg) is the librarian for the
International Rice Research Institute and is responsible for establishing the
world’s most comprehensive collection of rice literature. PARDON MY FRENCH BUT,
WHAT IN HELL DOES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH HOYAS???
I’m sure that she is a very nice lady with an above average I. Q. (She
was, it says here, a Fullbright scholar)!
She apparently has done work that will benefit a lot of hungry people.
BUT she hasn’t been shown to have contributed anything to the understanding of
the genus HOYA! If he wants to honor the lady because she is a friend, let him
name a new strain of rice for her! If
she is as intelligent as I think she’d have to be to have accomplished what
Kloppenburg says she has, I’m betting that she finds this publication very
embarrassing. If he were bound and determined to name it for someone, why not
name it for the person who discovered it?
Hoya golamcoi hasn’t been used and would have been a lot more
appropriate. AND WHILE I’M AT IT ---
Kloppenburg’s habit of using first and last names SUCKS!
AND STILL ANOTHER ONE
This one he called Hoya
lucyae. This was named for the “nickname” of Luzviminda Bicknell, which
is Lucy. Well, at least he refrained from calling it
luzvimindabicknelliae. I wonder
why? It’s so unlike him to use a small
easy to pronounce name when a long unpronounceable one will do!!
The thing that amazes
me about this one is that he said he’d been sent an umbel of flowers to
study. A picture of the umbel,
containing about 25 flowers, is found on page 8 of this issue. With all those flowers to work with, he
didn’t reproduce a single picture of a whole flower nor even a picture of an
entire flower part – just 6 pictures of bits and pieces that could never be
used to identify any species, although, anyone familiar with Kloppenburg’s work
could identify it as his. It was also
illustrated with a non-blooming plant picture that appears for the world to be
the same species as the one pictured as Hoya stoneiana – maybe even the
opposite side of the same plant. It’s not like he never did that
before. If you recall, he used the same
identical branch of the same identical plant to illustrate what he called
different species in his World of Hoyas book. They say a
leopard doesn’t change its spots!
The last sentence on
page 8 is incomplete. One wonders what
was meant to follow it??????
And Still Another – But What’s Its Name????
The name chosen this time is
Hoya
viracensis
???? OR WHAT?? That’s the title on the top of the page but the
actual publication further down the page says it is Hoya varacensis.. pies)!
This is said to be named for the place it was found, which he said is
Catanduanes, Virac Biranga,
Pollinarium book and there he wrote the location as “Catanduanes,
Virac Brig. Ketangang.” Ah well,
consistency and accuracy are oh so-oooooo boring!!!!
I tried translating his Latin diagnosis but
what he wrote makes no sense at all. That happens when a man who can’t even
spell words in his own language tries to write in a language not his own. Writing in Latin doesn’t make him a better
speller and when his editor is completely clueless, you end up with a
mess. The only part of it that was translatable is his saying that ift is similar to Hoya greenii but leaves small 6.5 cm. “longas” (Longas being
Latin for “word.”) and somewhat beaked, vs. 15 -20 cm. “longas;” calyx lobes rounded, ciliate similar to Hoya
kerrii.” And by the way, his
picture of the type
specimen proves that there is no resemblance to Hoya
greenii.
Left: Kloppenburg’s picture of what he says is a
calyx of this species. In his English
text he says that the sepals overlap at base about ¾ of their entire
length. The picture is so poor that
about all it can do is occupy space.
Right: My own tracing of a
photomicroscopic picture of a Hoya kerrii calyx. Do you see any resemblance? I don’t!
The sepals barely overlap at all, certainly not ¾ their length.
Another
One – or is it just more of the above?
Page 7 of this issue
of Fraterna
is labeled Flowers from Herbarium Sheet CAHUP 5973. There are 5 extremely
fuzzy pictures. All are labeled as pictures
of a calyx with carpels attached. None
could possibly be recognizable as hoya parts or anything else. How can anyone justify using dues payers’
money to post 5 out of focus pictures of the same thing when there are so many
good pictures or legible text that could occupy that space? I might remind you that all this crap
appeared right after dues were raised.
And also, I’d like to remind you it appeared in a publication that its
founders and authors promised it members would be a LAYMAN’S LANGUAGE publication!!!!
Surely members are asking, “They raised our dues for THIS????????” And how can anyone justify 5 pictures of a
single calyx occupying a whole page when they’d have fit on the blank half page
in this issue (page 3)? *
This could be just a
second specimen of the above species. He
did show two specimens on the preceding page but they are so small that not a
single word or number on the lower one can be read even with a large magnifying
glass. What that specimen is, is
anybody’s guess.
One also wonders,
“Just how long is it going to take the members of IHA to realize that all Dale Kloppenburg and Ann Wayman are capable of putting into any
publication are space fillers (and ugly ones at that)? As long as those two have anything at all to
do with Fraterna, all you’ll ever see is pure unadulterated “stercus”
(That’s Latin for what blows across farmers’ fields in a high wind).
*
Space in a publication is wasteful. It
contributes to fuel shortages, pollution, drought and global warming. Paper is made from trees that take one’s
lifetime to grow. Trees transpire and
create moisture that results in rain. Trees provide shade that helps keep
temperatures lower. I have read that a
tree equals a ton of air conditioning.
Every time one is cut down the temperature goes up. Every tree that is planted (if it lives to
maturity) cools the air beneath it. It
takes fuel to cut down trees because saws are no longer man-powered. Petroleum is also used in large quantities in
the paper manufacturing process. I was
told by my husband (who had a PhD in organic chemistry) that it takes more
petroleum to manufacture
paper grocery bags than it does to manufacture plastic ones,
which are made from petroleum products. Save our trees. Demand that space not be wasted in your
bulletins!!!!!