Name & Status The Hoya carnosa Compacta Group is an accepted name for a cultivar Group. It was published as a Group by L.Hatch in Houseplant Cultivars:Volume III in 2024.
Description This Group includes cultivars and individual plants with contorted leaves which grow around the vine and around one another. The leaves are inside out in varying degrees, forming the visual effect of loose to highly compact ropes as an individual plant matures.
Background The idea of the Compacta Group has been seeping into use to some extent since at least the 1977 when the Director of Research for Cobia, Inc. called some of them “Compact Type Hoyas” along with a list of names. Next came the illegitimate 1990 publication for Hoya compacta Burton which described an established cultivar as a species. Hoya carnosa ‘Compacta’ is still a maintained cultivar to this day, and so this would not normally be used as the name of a Group. However it is the best known name due to both the cultivar, and the illegitimate species publication. The Group is based on each of these and creates a most pragmatic nomenclatural and horticultural solution.
