Two newly discovered plants have been named in honor of two noted Filipino scientists.

The plants are the Hoya buotii Kloppenburg and Dendrobium milaniae Fessel Lueckel.

The Hoya was named in honor of Dr. Inocencio Buot Jr., an associate professor at the University of the Philippines Los Baños-College of Arts and Sciences-Institute of Biological Sciences (UPLB-CAS-IBS) and a fellow of the UPLB-based Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture (SEARCA).

Hoya buotii Kloppenburg was discovered in the wilderness of Mt. Banahaw, the mystical mountain in the Sierra Madre mountain range. It was named after Dr. Buot for his significant contributions to Philippine biodiversity.

Common names for Hoya are wax flower, waxplant, waxyvine, or simply hoya.

Hoya is a genus of 200 to 230 species of tropical climbing plants belonging to the family Apocynaceae (Gentianales asterids) following the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group (2003).

Buot is a fellow of the government-hosted SEARCA, one of the 15 "centers of excellence" of the Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization (SEAMEO).

He earned his master of science degree in Botany from UPLB in 1987 as a scholar of SEAMEO SEARCA, currently headed by Director Arsenio M. Balisacan, a UP Diliman professor in Economics.

Dendrobium milaniae, an orchid species, was discovered in the forested Mt. Pangasugan, a prominent part of the mountain range that transgresses Leyte Island and regarded as the "last forest frontier in Eastern Visayas."

It was named in honor of Dr. Paciencia Po Milan, currently president of the Visayas State University (VSU) based in Baybay City situated 120 kilometers south of Tacloban City.

The orchid was discovered by German scientists when Dr. Milan was head of the ViSCA-GTZ Ecology Program. ViSCA stands for Visayas State College of Agriculture (now Visayas State University) while GTZ is a German institution.

VSU and German scientists have been studying the flora and fauna of the Mt. Pangasugan, a part (594) hectares of which serves as VSU’s forest reserve and used in support of the university’s instruction, research, and extension programs in natural resources management.