Amorphophallus konjac 'GORDON'S GOLD'

 Amorphophallus konjac 'GORDON'S GOLD'

Voodoo Lily

Named after Dave Gordon, a plant collector and a former nursery owner in California.

Amorphophallus are very interesting plants. One species of this arum has the largest unbranched inflorescence in the world, the titan arum. Amorphophallus titanum is endemic to Sumatra. Due to its odor, like that of a rotting corpse, the titan arum is characterized as a carrion flower and is also known as the corpse flower or corpse plant.

Konjac is one of the species of Amorphophallus that I grow and I love all the four cultivars of this species that I have. 'Leo Song', 'Gordon's Gold', 'Nightstick', and the regular konjac. They have beautiful markings that are totally different from each other. They also look like small palm trees with out-of-this-world markings on the petiole. They also produce just a single leaf per season! Yes, just one. A single beautiful leaf that lasts from spring to fall. There's more about this plant, When in bloom it produces an odor like a dead animal! 😖 The smell is intended to attract the carrion flies that are its natural pollinators. 

Personally, it's all worth the wait. The flower is very unique, huge, and gorgeous. I can't wait to post mine on Instagram! 😂

'Gordon's Gold' is a spectacular addition to a garden. My corm last year (2021) was a huge 5 pounds split into two blooming sizes, so I now (Spring 2022) have two Gordon's Gold blooming this year.

It's exciting when you see your Hoya forming flower buds and it's even worse when you see your Amorphophallus doing that because it takes around 7 - 10 years for this plant to bloom and it may take the same amount of waiting for it to bloom again.

Hoya skinneriana 'Dee's big one'

 Hoya skinneriana     "Dee's big one"   "DD's Big One"

I got this plant as a fresh cutting labeled Hoya pubicalyx 'Red Button' on 2016.It was not a fast grower, but the growth was steady and bloomed for me on 2019, 3years from cutting. That's when I found out that the plant is actually not Hoya pubicalyx, but a Hoya skinneriana. Flowers are much bigger than pubicalyx and leaves look like big pointy carnosa leaves. The flowers will last 7 days outdoors under a tree where it gets direct morning sunlight but will last up to 3 weeks inside the greenhouse. This is a great plant for beginners.

 It got too big for its trellis so I decided to take several clones from the plant in the spring of 2019  to start another plant which I then called "The daughter plant". I planted all 10 clones in a 11" pot.

The daughter plant has grown faster than the mother plant ever did! Not only did it grow super fast, but also produced peduncles in only 8 months from cutting during fall 2020. I then decided to take some cuttings from the daughter plant in the early spring of 2021 just to see if her clones will be just as fast growers and just as early bloomers as the daughter plant. I called all the clones "The granddaughter plant" making the original plant "The grandmother plant".

I was happy that The grand daughter plant rooted really fast and already producing peduncles 9 months later. She is now the mother of all the rooted starters that we sell on our website sunnyjenni.com. Although the grandmother plant took a long time to bloom, it never stopped blooming since then. She had been growing and blooming all year round since 2019!

The grandmother plant below.

Back in the 70's, a grower named several NOID Hoya plants with the word "one" in their name. There was "Little One", "Sweet One", "Pink One", and half a dozen others. Everyone just assumed that "Dee's (or DD's) Big One" was part of that group...but then it turns out it was NOT.

Christine Burton states the following in an old issue of The Hoyan.

"I corresponded with Genevieve McDonald for a short time before her death, when she was a member of HSI. She told me that all of those “Ones” – Bright One, Cream One, Dapple Gray, Pink One, Pretty One, Sweet One, Little One, Little Star, Red Buttons, and Gold Star were her seedlings. Dee's Big One is not one of this group. She said she did not know the parentage of them but all were grown from seeds found on the hoyas growing in her yard on Merritts Island, Florida. Dee's Big One was named after Dorothy Skinner of Modesto CA, (Dee is probably Dorothy's nickname?) and was said to have come into the trade from Randy Bachmann's San Luis Gardens, Florida. For all that she knew they were either self-pollinated seedlings or hybrids."

Incidentally, in 2011, the plant called 'DD's Big One' has now its own species. It has been described as H. skinneriana by Kloppenburg and Wayman in 'Fraterna' Oct. 2011.

Also, Kloppenburg was not 100% confident that it originated from San Luis Gardens.  It sounds like there's a lack of incontrovertible evidence. It's still a bit of a mystery.