Hoya bulusanensis Elmer 1938
Type description:
In leaflets of Philippine Botany 10 (1938) 3575-3577. A. D. E. Elmer. Hoya bulusanensis Elmer n. sp. A small but rigid epiphyte, creeping and forming bunches along the upper side of large branches or upon inclining tree trunks. Stems flexible or bendable, occasionally branched, that portion near the root ligneous, gnarly at the point of branching, smooth, not wrinkled longitudinally in the yellowish brown state, minutely and numerously punctate, the ultimate branchlets thinner and slender, most of the nodes are enlarged and often with a short crippled branchlets from the axile, very crooked at or near the rigid stiff root cluster, where they cross they form enlargements. Leaves very thick, pale or yellowish green beneath, the upper surface paler green, normally opposite along the slender branches, more or less clustered toward the base or upon very short and thick seemingly abnormal branchlets, subdeciduous, glabrous but minutely punctate on both faces, the dry blades wrinkled on the upper but perfectly smooth on the lower side, flat, edges straight and entire, curing yellowish brown, of two distinct types, the orbicular to rotund shape and the elliptic to the obovately oblong type, the latter ones 2 cm wide above the middle and 4 cm in length, obtusely ro6nded at the apex, broadly cuneate at the base, the smaller kind 1.5 cm wide across the middle; petiole very short and very thick, curved and expanded toward and at the base, dull brown, rugose on my specimen, leaving large circular scars after falling; midrib scarcely evident or entirely obsolete in the smaller type of leaves, in the middle region longitudinally striate below especially so of the larger blades, lateral nerves none. Inflorescence axillary or terminated by equally short bracteated tubercles or receptacles: pedicles bearing rather rigid and livideus colored flowers, as long if not shorter than the peduncles; calyx spreading, 5-segmented, the lobes glabrous and obtuse to acute, coriaceous, 1.5 mm in length, united at the base; corolla sparsely ciliate pubescent along the margins, otherwise glabrate, united below the middle, the 5 lobes adnate and descending but with inflexed acute tips, about 5 mm long, relatively broad across the middle; corona united to the short column, comprised of 5 radially spreading prongs whose tips are strongly inbent, thick or fleshy, bifid at the tips, alternating in between them are erect linear processes; pistils 2, flask shaped.
Type specimen number 15937, discovered by A. D. E. Elmer on a steep forested ravine at 1500 feet elevation, Irosin (Mt. Bulusan), Province of Sorsogon, Luzon, May 1916.
Our species is a critical segregate from Hoya bilobata Schltr. based upon 420 Copeland from Davao. It should also be compared with the unpublished H. longipes ofthe same author. When my distribution was made it was sent out as Hoya diversifolia Elm., an untenable name since Blume had already used it.
Notation: See under Hoya panchoi Kloppenburg.