Status: Accepted and established with a description from the San Luis Gardens print sales list, 1981.
Category: An open pollinated hybrid
Originator: Genieve McDonald of Merritt Island Florida
Valuable Publications From oldest:
(1981).San Luis Gardens.
“Narrow green leaves with light speckling, very dark red blooms, dark corona. New growth dark red brown, excellent.”
C.M.Burton.(1981). Red Buttons. The Hoyan.3(1)3-4.
“None of the other species in commerce appear to have such dark (nearly black) corona scales…whatever this plant is, even though the name does not appear to describe it well, it is a designation that I feel is acceptable because it is a name that will be used. It is a plant so distinctive that it can be confused with no other, at least when it is in bloom, though the blooms are variable in color, often on the same peduncle…The variable color ranging from dirty white to almost black seems not to be caused by bleeding nectar…it often affects only parts of the flower or even parts of the corolla or corona only. At times half of the bloom…this un-uniformity of color coloers to be associated with extremely hot weather…Early spring bloom
C.M.Burton.(1987).Hoya pubicalyx,Merrill. The Hoyan.(9)1).
Here, Burton describes that the cultivar is different from the species carnosa and identifies it as Hoya pubicalyx based on side and shape differences in the corona and pollinarium. However, seedlings bloom as Hoya carnosa and it is not the species. Parentage was not known or understood when it was first established and described.
C.M.Burton. (1998). Hoya pubicalyx cv.Red Buttons. The Hoyan.20(1)4-7.
Hoya pubicalyx cv. Red Buttons (April 1976 blooms), Photo by Christine Burton.
(Contains C.M.Burton’s opinion regarding the difference between ‘Red Buttons’ and what is today commonly called ‘Royal Hawaiian Purple’ but was first established as ‘Hawaiian Royal Purple’-RCC).
Re: the 1998 publication: Today we no longer use the abbreviation cv., so the name is written Hoya ‘Red Buttons’. This cultivar was released without known parents. They have since been determined as Hoya pubicalyx and Hoya carnosa through seedling progeny (U.S.A., Australia).
The order of the pairing is unknown today and was unknown when it was released, though it has appeared written in a shorthand of the unestablished hybrid formula Hoya carnosa x pubicalyx on the lists of Michael Miyashiro.-RCC
6/1/2024 This entry was amended from the hardcopies with the status which was missing after a website update.. -R.C.C.