PS-TheHoyan
Vol. 10, #2
Hoya
shepherdii Short ex Hook.
A 100% Positive Feedback eBay Seller!
How in heaven’s name can an eBay seller who offers
what looks like just taken 1 node cuttings (2 leaves with absolutely no new
growth visible in pictures) of almost 100% mislabeled species, earn a 100%
positive feedback???
I formerly has all the
details concerning the false advertising of this seller here but this seller
threatened to sue me if I did not remove my critique. I know that I could win the law suit because
I can prove that every word I said is true, however, even the winner of a
lawsuit has to pay a lawyer and spend a lot of time away from home. I have neither the time nor the money. If
this seller should by any remote chance win, she’d be the big loser because I
don’t own anything but a ten year old car (with a lot of mileage and threadbare
tires) and a lot of hoyas, all of which would be dead by the time a trial would
be over as I have no one to care for them when I’m not at home.
If any of you
would like my personal opinion about any eBay or catalog hoya offering, I’ll be
happy to tell you what my opinion is. My
e-mail address is thehoyan@bellsouth.net. I may not be able to identify the plants you
question but I think I’ll be better able to than most people. I can almost always tell you what a hoya
isn’t, even if I can’t tell you what it is.
By the way, this seller whose
critique I had to remove from this site says that she is praying for me. Why is it that these days, whenever someone
catches another in the wrong that person says, “I’m praying for you?” Why, I wonder, and for what? That I’ll be forgiven for telling the truth?
When did honesty and free speech
become sins?
________________________________________________________________________________
Paul Shirley’s Hoyas
I took a look at this grower’s on line catalog because so
many have asked me if I’d recommend him.
I found this one difficult because the pictures are so small. I tried clicking on the pictures to get
enlargements. Out of the long list, only
two enlarged. At least half of the offerings were not illustrated. Here are things that I am 100% sure are
errors:
1).
He lists a Hoya angustifolia (2 times) but whatever
it is (or they are), it is not Hoya angustifolia. The Code’s “law of precedence” dictates that
only one species can have that name and the one published by James Traill,
circa 1830 is that one. Even though it
turned out that Hoya angustifolia Traill is a narrow leaf clone of Hoya
pottsii, doesn’t mean that the name can be recycled and used for
another species. The Code doesn’t allow
it. Whatever Paul Shirley has, it is not
Hoya
angustifolia.
2).
He lists a Hoya burtonii. There is no such hoya. It, if it is what he thinks it is, is Hoya
burtoniae, because it was named for
a female (me). The ii ending tells us it
was named for a man.
3). Hoya carnosa compacta should be Hoya
compacta.
4). Crinkle-8 should be Krinkle-8.
5). Unless someone has snuck
in a new publication in the last few days, there is no such hoya as Hoya
coloura.
6). There is no such hoya as Hoya halophylla. If this is what Mr. Shirley thinks it is,
which I doubt, the name is Hoya halophila. The name halophila
means “salt lover.” It was named that
because Schlechter found it growing on sea shores in
7). I 100% guarantee that the hoya pictured as Hoya
macgregorii is NOT that species.
No way could a hoya species, with a well preserved
holotype specimen, having an umbel of flowers on it, no larger in diameter than
a US quarter be that ugly thing with an umbel of flowers about the size of a softball.
8). The cultivar name is ‘Minibelle,’ but Mr. Shirley calls
it mini bell. The cultivar, Minibelle, was named for Minibelle Hummel, the wife
of its hybridizer. The Code dictates that cultivar names be upper cased.
9).
Hoya paziae is not in circulation. What
he has, is a cultivar, named ‘Iris Marie,’ that is
posing as Hoya paziae.
10). I
am sure that the one posing as Hoya picta it not that species. Blume left us a very good drawing of his Hoya
picta and it doesn’t match this one.
11). The
cultivar is Pink Silver, not pink silver.
Cultivar names should, per the Code, be upper
cased.
12). No way on earth can the one labeled Hoya
ruscifolia be that species. I am
sure that what he has is Hoya bilobata. Hoya ruscifolia is, in my opinion,
the Philippine version of Hoya curtisii. It certainly looks like it to me. If I am right, then Hoya ruscifolia is the
correct name for Hoya curtisii.
13). The name is Hoya thomsonii. There is no P in that name.
14). He
listed a USDA-81079. It is not a hoya but I don’t have a clue as to what it
is. It could be wheat, corn, skunk
cabbage of any one of (by now) at least one hundred thousand other things
imported into the
On Line Vilification of a Truly Honest Seller
NOTE:
Just before David Liddle died, I started
getting letters from people who knew that I bought lots of cuttings from him and that I
had sent him several consignments. These
letters were from
people who wanted to take advantage of
the shipping discount that such an order provides. My consignment was sent very early in the
year and it arrived in August. I did
not make a record of when it arrived but put the date of 8-09 on all the labels
of cuttings I planted from that order. I
don’t know if others sent orders to Mr. Liddle before I did or after I
did. I don’t much care. I believe that the Liddles fill orders in the
order received but, not being there peeping over their shoulders, I couldn’t
swear to it. If they don’t, it’s their
business. If they want to push a special friend or a valued customer ahead of
me, I don’t mind, as long as my order arrives before freezing weather.
I was sent copies of Dave’s Garden letters written by
two very disgruntled “wannabe” hoyas authorities, vilifying David Liddle for
sending orders that came to him later than theirs, before filling their orders
and for being very uncommunicative. How they’d know when David Liddle received
orders from others, I don’t know. I
suspect they were only guessing.
I
don’t know what their expectations were.
I can only tell you of my experience.
I never wrote a snail mail letter nor an e-mail
letter to David Liddle that he didn’t answer.
Of course, I didn’t expect a step by step report from him daily about
the status of my order. I sent the order
and only asked that he acknowledge getting the order. Then I waited for it to arrive. In every case, the plants were sent before he
even sent a bill. Giving credit for such
a large number of cuttings (or for anything else) went out of style about
1940. The man trusted us. He didn’t deserve being trashed as he was on
that DG forum.
One of the Wannabe Hoya Authorities, added at the end of her trashing of David
Liddle, a statement to the effect that David Liddle didn’t have any hoyas that
could not be purchased from a
PORTRAIT OF A VERY HONEST
MAN:
The year was 1981.
I was editor of The Hoyan. Each issue posted deadline dates for all copy
that was to be published there. The
deadline was two months prior to the desired publication issue. The reason was that the bulletins had to be
printed by offset, as no one had a computer that was capable of printing a
bulletin. Medal plates had to be made
for each sheet printed. That was very
expensive. Our printer gave us a
tremendous discount, mostly as a favor to my husband who sent him a lot of work
from the GA Professional Engineers’ Society publication. There was a string attached. We had to have our camera ready copy to him
two months before it was needed. The reason was that there were times when
business was slow but he still had to pay his help. He said that with the two month deadline, he
could work The Hoyan in during those slow periods.
This “extremely honest man” seemed to think that the 2
month deadline applied to everyone but him.
He never, not even once, sent his ads or articles on time and I always
had to hold them over until the next issue.
Each time, he complained to the HSI officers and board members, saying
that Chris Burton was trying to ruin his business. The turkey even tried to claim that he’d
never been told there was a 2 month deadline, even though said deadlines were
published in every issue of The Hoyan.
Each quarterly issue of The Hoyan was mailed on
the 16th day of the quarter. The Winter
1981 issue was due to go out in only a few days, when I got a letter from this
“extremely honest man.” The letter was
dated early December and postmarked around the 12th of January. This “extremely honest man” wanted an ad to
go in that Winter 1981 (January) issue. The bulletins were mailed from
The ad that didn’t get into the January issue was for
a book that this “extremely honest man” said he’d written about hoyas. He
stated in that ad that it was being published by the
I’d thought that was the end of that. Then one day, I sat down for lunch and as I
ate I watched the news on WSB-TB (at that time an NBC affiliate, now ABC). I was surprised to see my daughter, who was
associate news producer, interviewing Elvin McDonald. Vicki didn’t like going on camera but
sometimes she had to when all reporters were on serious assignments elsewhere. Elvin McDonald was a member of HSI and the
Garden Writers Association of America as was I, though I’d never met him or
corresponded with him prior to that day.
He’d been invited to do a series of lectures and a book signing at
As soon as the news went off the air, my telephone
rang. It was Elvin McDonald. He’d gotten my phone number from my daughter.
He asked me, “What do you know about ___
_____?” I don’t recall my exact words
but it was something like, “Nothing good!”
Elvin told me that he’d interviewed this “extremely
honest man” for an article he’d written for Family Circle Magazine. Elvin’s article about this man and the free
publicity about the book that was coming out in September appeared in Family
Circle’s February issue (a full month after it didn’t go in the January
issue of The Hoyan).
Many HSI members (including me) wrote to the named
editor at
A lot of people wrote to the editor of Family
Circle Magazine and
complained about that false information.
So the editor wrote a letter to “extremely honest man” and demanded an
explanation. Per Elvin, the explanation
they got was that “Elvin had been
premature in making that announcement.”
The result was that Elvin was called into the publisher’s office and was
fired from his job as garden editor of Family Circle Magazine for
“irresponsible journalism.”
I told Elvin about how “extremely honest man” tried to
get me booted from The Hoyan for not publishing the same thing a full month
earlier. He asked me to write a letter to Family Circle on his behalf. I did and I sent copies of all the correspondence
I had from “extremely
honest man,” concerning this publication.
I sent Elvin copies also. Family Circle then offered him his job
back but by then, Elvin had a better job with House Beautiful.
Just how honest is “extremely honest man?” So honest that he was willing to let the
father of several children lose his job ( and means of
support for those children) in order to save face! And if
the letters I’ve gotten from others over the years can be believed (and I
believe them), that one incident is just the tip of the iceberg!
Maybe he’s become “born agin?” Don’t tell me. I am sure there are true Christians who have
been, figuratively speaking, “spiritually born again,” but whenever I hear
people, who have something to sell, tell me that they’ve been ‘born agin,” I know to watch my back because someone is
about to try to cheat me out of the life’s savings he thinks I have.
Recently I read a statement by “Extremely Honest Man,”
that he had always thought that the hoya now known as Hoya vanuatuensis was Hoya
diptera but now knew they were different species. I say that statement is false. I know because I bought that same identical
hoya from him when he put out his own first retail hoya list. He sold it to me labeled Hoya chlorantha. As soon as I got it, I knew it was mislabeled. I wrote him a letter and enclosed a copy of
Rechinger’s original Hoya chlorantha publication which
included both a written description and illustrations. I told him that what he’d sent me was not
what I ordered. It definitely was not Hoya
chlorantha. He answered my
complaint by writing,
“Yes, I caught that too, but I had to call it something.” He admitted that he’d sold a cutting that he
KNEW was mislabeled because he “had to call it something.” What was wrong with giving it a collection
number and saying right up front, “I don’t know what it is?” That’s honest? Yes, dear friends, I kept that letter. It is still in my office file cabinet.
Now I read, on the Internet, letters by “Wannabe Hoya
Authority,” saying
that I should buy from this “extremely honest hoya seller”
because he is extremely honest and American! I believe, very strongly in “buying American”
whenever I can but I believe more strongly in buying from “truly extremely
honest merchants.” The one “Wannabe
Hoya Authority” says I should buy from simply does not, in my opinion, qualify.
Plus that, he won’t sell to me. The
reason he gave me was, “You’ll criticize my labeling.” I reply to that was, “I’ll criticize your labeling anyway and
you won’t have my money in your pocket.” Gimme a
break!
I have to agree with the late David Liddle who wrote
in a letter to me (which I still have) that “Wannabe Hoya Authority” (he didn’t
call her that in exactly those same words) “has painted herself into a corner.”
_____________________________________________________________________________________
THE LETTERS KEEP COMING!
QUESTION: At least a dozen came since the last Liddle consignment, concerning one David called Hoya aff.
pubifera (IML-1301) but my inquirers can’t seem to grasp the fact
that “aff.” is
an abbreviation for the Latin word, “affinis” and it means “related to” or
“similar to.” It
also has another meaning, one coined by hoya sellers. That meaning is, “I used to call it this but
now I know it isn’t this.” When the average collector sees an
“aff.” attached to a name, he or
she simply drops it and pass it on as if the “aff.” had never been there. Their
questions have all come as, “I bought Hoya pubifera from David Liddle and
wonder if you can tell me what the flowers are like. Do you have a
picture?”
ANSWER: Again, my answer is the same
as the last dozen or so times I was asked.
There is no such hoya as Hoya pubifera. A plant species name doesn’t officially exist
until it is validly published. Hoya pubifera has never been validly
published.
A.D.E. Elmer tried to publish a Hoya pubifera back in
1938 but his publication is not recognized because it was written entirely in
English and the Code required a Latin diagnosis for all species published after
1935. To date, no one has seen fit to
validate his publication. Even should
the name be validated, the hoyas sold by David Liddle as “Hoya aff. pubifera”
(IML-1301 & IML-1282) could not be considered as being that species.
David Liddle was my friend and I agree with most of
his determinations but even the best friends disagree on some things. When I first saw David’s listing of this as Hoya
aff. pubifera, I wrote to him and told him
that there was no way this could be Hoya pubifera as described by A. D. E. Elmer. He wrote back, in a letter dated
As you see, all my “preaching” hasn’t even gotten to my
friends. What I have preached is, “For
goodness sake, don’t put a name of any kind on an unidentified hoya until you
know what it is; just give it a number!”
Once you do have a name on it, right or wrong leave it alone until you
can finally get it right. NEVER! NEVER!
NEVER remove the collector’s number (IML #s or DMC #s, etc.) because, as more
is learned about these things the names those numbers represent get
changed. For example, there is one
IML-number that I know about that had a different species name given it in 3 or
4 consecutive year’s catalogs.
Here is why I know that IML-1301 & IML-1282 are
not Hoya
pubifera and cannot be called that, even should Elmer’s publication be
validated.
1).
Elmer’s holotype specimen did not have a single flower on
it. None of his isotypes had a single
flower either. Since many plants of many
genera have paired leaves and a vining habit (Aeschynanthus and Dischidia
for example) Elmer’s plant could be some other genus.
2).
Elmer’s holotype specimen and all of his isotypes were of vines
that were completely bald. There isn’t a
hair on either leaves, petioles or stalks. Elmer described his species as “Young stems
herbaceous, slender, curved and inclined to twine, yellowish brown, soft and
minutely velutinous, subterete, covered with very small papillae. Leaves opposite, widely scattered, thick or
leathery, curing grayish to yellowish brown, entire, the edges sometimes
pressed with involute margins, narrowly oblong or oblanceolate to narrowly
spatulate, velutinous beneath as well as densely or numerously papillose, the
upper surface very similar but only slightly pubescent,” etc. He described other parts and gave collection
data, i.e., the
type found at
PLEASE correct your labels to either IML-1301 or IML-1282
(whichever you have) and leave the Hoya pubifera off because neither of
them is that species, nor do either of them resemble authentic material cited
by Elmer. Both of these plants are completely glabrous…. Not a hair on either.