Question

[james mickelso]

Sorry, on my screen it looks pretty light. Phals I've seen in growing houses are darker. From an article I read in the 90's in AOS mag they put their phals in shorter light conditions to force them to bloom. They covered the house and dictated the light length. where most grow there is little cooling between seasons. I don't have the mags anymore. I tried looking it up on net but can't get to pdf. Thanks for the read. I'll look at it tonight. Love getting more info. Maybe you can get pdf on "induction" from AOS. Seems to me it was around 1992. Around the time they were building their new home in Florida. Thanks for the word induction. I've been wracking my feeble old brain for that word forever.

[MoniCattleya]

Thank you guys for your answers!! I will let you know when my plant blooms.

You all are as nice as the beautiful plants you grow!!!

Big hugs.

[naoki]

Oh, I got it, James. You are right, reduction in day length (or increase in night length is more appropriate) can help inducing flowering for some Phals. This is called photoperiodism in flowering. In many orchids, this is facultative, meaning that seasonal change in day length CAN help flowering, but not required.

For example, here is an example with Phalaenopsis (Doritits) pulcherrima:
The effects of daylength on protein synthesis and flowering in Doritis pulcherrima
But they can flower without short days in my grow tent.

There are quite a few studies about temperature effects on Phalaenopsis flowering and here is one of them:
http://jxb.oxfordjournals.org/content/57/15/4043.short

Sorry to be too technical, but reducing both the day length and the temperature probably will help in general (different species will respond differently, though).

[james mickelso]

Thanks Naoki. I like technical articles. More info is always good. Some phal types do live higher up the mountains and those are probably more dictated by temps. Somewhere AOS has articles that gave where the phal species were from. I wish I could open their archives.