Khan Flame 'Lucifer'

[Des]

Don there ways of getting the cool type cymbids to flower in the warmer areas . What are your temps in winter and summer ?

[Bobfharris]

Originally Posted by Des

Don there ways of getting the cool type cymbids to flower in the warmer areas . What are your temps in winter and summer ?

Care to expand on how to get cool weather cymbs to bloom under warm conditions? My personal experience tells me that it is only true for certain varieties that have some tolerance built in genetically. But of course I'm always willing to hear of new things.

[Des]

Bob ,as I don't need to do this myself I don't have any personal experience . However I have read a discussion on another forum and it would seem as though they manage to get the plants to produce spikes. I very much doubt if this could be done on a commercial scale though. But the hobbyist with a few plants might be sucessful.
The method as i understand it is to stand the plant in an styrene ice bucket Filled with cold water at night . Some also use ice in the bucket. Thinking about it , I would maybe use the same method used here for growing Disas, Where cold water circulates through a deepfreeze and is then pumped through the pots using drippers

[Des]

I have just been looking at pics of some of the warm growing Cyms and would like ask , why would you want to grow the cooler types when you have so many stunning warm growing types . Is it just just for the challenge?
And would I be able to grow the warmer types in my cooler conditions

[orchids3]

Des, You are right there are a lot of warm growing cyms
that are nice but the really big ones are harder to grow in warm areas. Have never resorted to ice but giving the plants a nice mist of cool water before the sun hits them in the morning and just after the sun sets in the evening does help some of the plants to bloom that might not otherwise bloom. I like for my plants to be dry before dark when I use this method. Evening rain does the same thing naturally here on the coast so have to turn off the automatic sprinklers depending on the Wx forcast. I dont seem to get anykind of rot from rain if the plants are wet after dark but I sure do with well water.
It is also hard to get really good warm growers as most of the commercial producers in the USA are in areas that have cool nights. Some are beginning to realize that there is a market for warm growing cymbidiums and things are improving.

[Des]

Thanks for that Harry. Do you think that the warm growers will grow here ?

[orchids3]

You could ask the ICA about that because I am not sure but believe that the warm growers can grow in cool areas much easier than cool growers can grow warm. In fact I have moved cool growers from California to Florida. Growing any cymbidium in a warm enviornment is easy - what happons is that the cool growing plants grows reasonably well but never flower. The ideal is that the daytime temperature needs to swing 20 degrees from 75 F to 55 F day to night in mid summer or at least during flower initating part of the year to initiate flower spikes. In Florida it may not get below 85 F day or night in July or August when most of the Himilayan type of cymbidiums initiate flower spikes - so the spikes do not initiate. A lot of the plants we have success with are from a differant part of the world. Some plants will initiate spikes out of the normal range only to heat blast after the flowers initiate. Some flowers initiate much later in the year and bloom later - these we do have some success with. Due to the mixing of species many of the plants the nurseries sell may or may not bloom - its a matter of making as much of an SWAG as possible.
Please excuse my Marine Corp slang SWAG = Scientific Wild AXX Guess.

[Des]

Harry that is very interesting , and it may be the reason why some of my cymbids are flowering early this year. I moved a number of plants from the warm sun drenched north side of my house to the colder south side last year . This has possibly made them initiate flower spikes earlier . This makes me wonder if it is not possible to to use this method in order to manipulate flowering times !