Fact or Myth???

[Ray]

Dr. Yin-Tung Wang at Texas A&M proved that it's overall cooler growth temperatures that spark spiking in phals, not the difference between night and day.

If you grew your plants with a 12°C min and provided a max of 22°-24°C, you would likely initiate spiking. Expose them to that same differential, but with a minimum of about 20°C, and you probably wouldn't.

[charmbutterfly]

This is done in my country in the caribbean to get orchids particularly Cymbidiums to flower. It hardly EVER gets cold enough for cyms to flower there.

[Neverend]

Eh, it doesn't work for Phals really, they need a cool environment at night to induce flowering, those tiny ice cubes can do nothing to make the environment cold!

[adriponic]

Thanks Ray for the tip about Dr. Yip-Tung Wan. Where can I get a free publication of Dr. Wan's works on the net? If I get the rationale correctly one needs a differential of 10-12 celcius to spark flowering in phals.

Do you know if it's better to have the higher temp at night or at day? Here is a tropical country and its easier for me to cool down the plants at night rather than day.
At the very time I am writing it's 19:02 hrs here and temp in gh is 27.6 celcius and most certainly will not drop
below a 25.4 celcius until next sunshine.

I never thought to induce the differencial the other way
round. Thanks again. I'll be trying bothways simulstaneously on a population of p. shilleriana (12 in
each group) soon.

Regards

[Ray]

Check out Texas A&M University - I know the pdf's are somewhere out there.

His study showed - and is what got Taiwanese growers doing so well - that if you grow the phals very warm, they will add vegetation rapidly, but won't "waste" their energy blooming. Then, in order to foster spiking for sales, grow them at cooler temps - I think the range was 17°-25°C.

[orchids3]

Charmbutterfly - can you confirm exactly what you do in
the carribean to get Cymbidiums to Bloom? Is it putting ice in the pots in the evening?

[adriponic]

Thanks again Ray