I suspect the Stanhopea blog reflects the author's experience, and those are his winter temperatures. I suspect the IOSPE entries are summer night temperatures recorded near habitat, and don't reflect what the plant tolerates. The Baker cultural sheets give extrapolations of temperatures throughout the year for the species they cover.
I use an electric heater in my sunroom at night in the winter to a minimum of 10C / 50 F. I use an electric evaporative cooler during the summer, connected to a garden hose that enters the room through a gap I leave in a glass door. I converted the electric socket into which I plug these to have a ground fault circuit interrupter, which is a very good idea for outlets near wet areas.
Now, in the hottest and most humid part of our summer, the sun only shines on the windows for 2 hours or so in the morning. There are trees to the east that screen the sun until it is well above the horizon. Evaporative cooling doesn't work well now. I run it all the time. The temperature day and night is around 26.5C / 80 F. The relative humidity is a steady 70%. Without the cooler day temperatures would be around 35-40C / 95-104 F. My experience has been plants easily tolerate daytime temperatures like this when they have much cooler nights, but not 26C. So I run the cooler during the day and it is around 26C all the time.
We get 0-12 nights below 0C / 32 F here each winter, but it warms up the next day. During the day the sun is low enough to heat the room during the 4-6 hours during which it shines directly onto the windows. Daytime temperatures may be 15C / 60 F on the very few really cold and cloudy days, to over 32C / 90 F on very many warm days. I picked 10C / 50 F for the sake of my Vandas. The many succulents that also overwinter in there tolerate temperatures almost to freezing. The winter relative humidity is between 40%-60% most of the time; when it is cooling down for the night, the RH goes much higher until the heater starts. Most of my orchids grow through the winter. In fact, the ones preferring cool nights grow better during the winter than they do during the summer, when they may struggle.
Spring and fall are dry here. The evap lowers the night temperatures to around 18C / 65 F. Day temperatures are 35-40C / 95-104 F. I let daytime temperatures rise and use the cooler at night.
I would prefer filling the evap cooler with 5-gallon / 19 liter buckets of water myself, to stay strong. It takes about 20 gallons / 75 liters of water. My bathroom is about 15 steps from the cooler. I often work long days, and the reservoir would run dry. This would not damage the cooler, because the pump has a float valve shutoff. But the cooler would be blowing hot, dry air into the sunroom. So I switched to the garden hose automatic fill system.
|