Writing about Hoyas

Christine M. Burton documented Hoya cultivation and identification through The Hoyan and its online continuation, P.S. The Hoyan. The first online issue, dated October 1, 2002, continued discussions from the print newsletter and brought her observations and correspondence to readers on the web.^[1]

Researching plants and their names

Her writing connects the experience of growing plants with the work of tracing their names through botanical publications and specimens. In a 2013 retrospective, Burton recalled buying a Hoya from Ted Green in the early 1970s. She described how names used for cultivated plants could change as she compared them with published descriptions and historical illustrations.^[2]

Burton also recounted searching the libraries at Harvard and the Smithsonian for Hoya literature, collecting photocopies of publications, and maintaining fourteen file-cabinet drawers of Hoya research material. These are her own accounts of the documentary work behind her newsletters.^[2]

In another 2013 issue, she recalled examining and photocopying loaned herbarium specimens through an affiliation with Fernbank Science Center in Atlanta. The account documents how she described her research; the nature of that affiliation and the institutional loan arrangements have not been independently established here.^[3]

A contribution to nomenclature

Burton published the combination Hoya wallichii in 1996. A later taxonomic study by Michele Rodda, Nadhanielle Simonsson Juhonewe and David J. Middleton clarified the species and noted that Burton had applied the name to material subsequently described as Hoya danumensis. Her authorship of the combination and her identification of the cultivated plant are separate parts of that history.^[4]

Reading her work

Burton’s newsletters preserve cultivation observations, historical interpretations, correspondence and identification arguments. Those statements belong to their particular sources and dates. Later taxonomic research can support, qualify or revise an identification, so her historical accounts are read alongside the original descriptions and subsequent studies.

A recent portrait

Phil Achleman’s Names Have Roots episode “Christine Burton: An Unfinished Portrait,” published October 20, 2026, offers a retrospective introduction to her work. It is a secondary account; the biographical material above is grounded in Burton’s own newsletters and the cited taxonomic study.^[5]

For issue availability and gaps in the collection, see The Hoyan: holdings and missing issues and P.S. The Hoyan: holdings and issue index.

References and further listening

1. Burton, C. M. (2002). P.S. The Hoyan, 1(1), October 1. Opening editorial; held PDF p. 1.
2. Burton, C. M. (2013). P.S. The Hoyan, 13(2). Opening plant discussion and “New Book Review”; held PDF pp. 3 and 5.
3. Burton, C. M. (2013). P.S. The Hoyan, 13(1). Herbarium-loan recollection; held PDF p. 7.
4. Rodda, M., Simonsson Juhonewe, N. & Middleton, D. J. (2016). The taxonomic status of the presumed extinct Singaporean Hoya wallichii (Apocynaceae: Asclepiadoideae). Gardens’ Bulletin Singapore, 68(2), 175–187; especially pp. 176–177.
5. Achleman, P. (2026). Christine Burton: An Unfinished Portrait. Names Have Roots, episode 6, October 20.