Xylobium grow conditions

[rbarata]

Hello, my friends

I have an unidentified pbulb of something that could be a xylobium. I can't find many info about its care conditions, but since this genera is a close relative to Lycaste, Bifrenaria and Maxillaria, can I use them as a reference?
I think they all have approx the same distribution and climate ranges so...

By the way...does anyone knows of a site where I can see the distribution of a plant in a map? It would be great and really helpful to have this info and use each plant distribution as a picture layer on top of a map to see the common areas....just an idea I had just now...that's a good project for a site.

[estación seca]

Originally Posted by rbarata

... By the way...does anyone knows of a site where I can see the distribution of a plant in a map? It would be great and really helpful to have this info and use each plant distribution as a picture layer on top of a map to see the common areas....just an idea I had just now...that's a good project for a site....

It would be an enormous undertaking. Sometimes distribution maps can be found in books or scientific publications devoted to particular plant groups. If this information is on the Internet, it almost always requires payment to view.

Sometimes, you can search for specimens at herbariums. In some cases they provide collection locality data, and you can use this to find the spot on a map. This is how I have found locality data for some Angraecums from Madagascar.

But many older specimens don't have coordinates. An example: Linnaeus, in his description for Cereus peruvianus, referred to the the plant as growing in Peru, in the Caribbean. The description is so brief that nobody can tell what plant he actually meant, or what part of the New World it came from. We can't even tell whether he was referring to a treelike cactus (like the current genus Cereus) or to a low globular cactus (like the current genus Melocactus.) People have guessed he was referring to what is now known as Cereus hildmannianus, but there is no reason to think this is correct.

And with orchids, a lot of locality data for recently discovered and limited-range orchids is kept secret to prevent poaching.

[kg5]

As an example have been looking for plants that take full sun but there is no reference to what part of the planet the full sun in question is located so the info becomes totally useless to the plant grower sadly.

The full sun even changes greatly if the location is in dry heat or humid heat.

A lot of my searched plant info is from a plant group from area X. Who knows what where area X is located.

But it is fun searching and real gems do turn up!

[stonedragonfarms]

Without knowing which species it is, I'd probably start it out on the cool shaded side; I believe most xylobium grow at elevation (i.e. potentially warm days, but cool nights), are semi terrestrial, so we can infer that they're not full on sun (though they may require a seasonal boost in light associated with seasonal leaf drop during winter months) & I'd conjecture regular water & average humidity (which may either have spikes during the pm hours as is common as fogs/cloud cover amass). I'd probably look to find specific info on the type species for the genus and use that as a launching point.
Good luck and keep us posted,
Adam


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[rbarata]

Cool temps here only from october onwards...until then, 25 ºC (77 F) is the minimum I can get (without A/C).
From what I've read, they like bright shaded light and intermediate to cool temps (whatever that might be, since the nomenclature used is the same for different ranges, depending on the source).
The altitude of their distribution is, in general, between 600 and 2300 mts which, according IOSPE, is classified as cool and warm. I guess it can be transposed to cool and intermediate.

[stonedragonfarms]

Originally Posted by rbarata

Cool temps here only from october onwards...until then, 25 ºC (77 F) is the minimum I can get (without A/C).
From what I've read, they like bright shaded light and intermediate to cool temps (whatever that might be, since the nomenclature used is the same for different ranges, depending on the source).
The altitude of their distribution is, in general, between 600 and 2300 mts which, according IOSPE, is classified as cool and warm. I guess it can be transposed to cool and intermediate.

If you google Xylobium and herbarium specimens you will get a list of museums/botanical garden collections that have Xylobium in their collections; for example: Neotropical Herbarium Specimens
To the far right of the collection data you will often see a more specific location of collection than just the country; if you then google the specific location and weather data, you will get a variety of hits that will give you seasonal/monthly average high/low temps, rainfall, etc. You should also be able to google the location and altitude to see the range. It's a little more precise than the general "Peru" that IOSPE may give. Hope this helps,
Adam