What flowering times means?

[Jan Pahl]

Normally growers tend to make a mistake thinking that orchids species flowering times are like “clock-works” and that's no true by any means.

Flowering season is just a statistical behaviour normally ruled by day length, temperature, and humidity, and the 3 variables mixed with the “genetical” individuality makes flowering times less easy to understand.

First you have to know how individuality behaves, some species actually are individually very precise most of the time and year after year it would flowers at his “calendar date”, other species individuality behaves more erratically, something that means that even if they tend to flower at “calendar date”, it can vary even a month or more from "average" between one year or the other just because of some degree of environmental or cultural "instability".

The other thing are second flowerings, some species actually can eventualy flower a second time in a defined or undefined moment depending the species, other species actually can bloom more than twice in a very ample season.

The third thing to now is that flowering season is a statistical behavior, so when people make judgments about flowering season those judgments could be underestimated because it takes in to acount the majority but by any means all plants, or it could be overestimated because taking to account all plants in more than some cases could means almost mark more than half of the year calendar. Also distributions can be very unlikely, some of them quite compress, others more "flat".

Flowering times also can be imprecise because the vast majority of species, even “clock-works” ones, have more than one flowering season ((“one” for each natural population)), or it can have progressive geographical variations on flowering times ((clines)), or it even can have plants of the same population that have two flowering season ((it means “two peacks” that not implies any second flowerings)). All of these ruled genetically because it repeat itself on cultivation.

Flowering season in many cases is simply extremely overestimated has a “determimistic” way to differentiate species and possible hybrids. Only good knowledge about plant vegetative behaviour, flower and vegetative anatomy plotted with the statistical trend that flowering season actually is, can corroborate if a “suspicious flowering behaviour” actually is a suspicious behavior or not. Thinking that in the vast majority of species "flowering season" is a very well defined time on the year for very near almost 100% of all specimens inside the species actually is not know or at least put aside valuable things about the species the author is talking about. This don't means flowering season alone is not "informative", on the contrary it is very helpful but only if we understand that is statistical and not deterministic...

All this could sound "difficult" but is not, of course not all is applicable to each particular species case.

[isurus79]

Of course there are many variables for blooming 'seasons' for each species as you have stated, however, to me it makes sense to give an approximate time for when to expect blooms. For example, if someone asks me 'When will my Dend ansomum bloom?' I can say with pretty good certainty 'Spring!' and be fairly accurate. I could explain everything you said above but most people would rather hear 'Spring!' The fact is that many orchids bloom fairly regularly at the same time every year and there are statistical averages that can back that up. Of course there are exceptions to every rule, but the rules for blooming seasons are usually very simple (often one word, like 'Spring!') while the exceptions tend to take a long time to explain. I think it is for the mere sake of simplicity that many growers talk about a blooming season for a particular species and most of the time they are correct!

[Jan Pahl]

Yes is useful and I didn't say the opposite, what I said is that statistical trends is by no means deterministic paths.

Lets put an example.

You can say that C. mossiae flowers in springtime between march to june, and since many orchid collectors would have no more than two or three cultivars, chances are that this would be true most of the time.

On the other hand if you manage a medium mossiae collection chances are that your mossiaes would bloom between February to July, with more plants, you would find mossiaes between January to August, and if you are a large scale grower you would find that mossiae can even have few plants an November, December, or even in September.

What I am trying to say here is that even if "chances" says your particular cultivar is going to flower on spring time, there is a respectable chance to buy a mossiae that flowers in winter or in summer.... and that is something to take in to consideration since I am not talking about "few" rare abnormalities because only the extreme parts of the "flowering" season can be taken has "rare events" seen ""only"" inside very large collections.

[Jan Pahl]

Well I am going to put here what is the best way to talk statistically about any species.

If the Species have a very well defined flowering period is better to talk about "months" and divide it between peaks (where most of the flowerings occur) and tails (where flowerings also occur). Also if complete Info is not available them is better to talk about "season" an use "conditionals" like for example "around Mid summer".

If the species don't have a very well defined flowering period better is to construct around the "flowering peak" all the conditionals. For example, "the flowering peak es around (months or season) but the species can bloom freely ("outside months/season" or "between x and y")

If the species actually can flower more than once this information needs to be included. In this case relevant information are things like if second flowerings are normal events or just possible events or/and if second flowerings are well defined or not.

At last some species can have more than one main flowering peak sufficiently distanciated from each other to be treated has different peaks. In this case is better to avoid language like "the species blooms in spring and a second time in Autumn" since this is understood has second flowering and not has two main flowerings, them in this cases is better to make clear you are talking about two main peaks, for example,"the species have two flowering peaks, the majority booms in x but some blooms at y"

Of course more botanical precise "Scientific" papers need another language more suited to words like "mean", "kurtosis", "standard deviations", etc. Last paragraphs are adaptations to our horticultural word.

P.D. If someone that manage English has a mother-tongue wants to contribute or add more precise "sentence construction" in this subject,please feel free to contribute.

[Sun rm.N.E.]

Thanks for these interesting and thoughtful posts. Most of us probably have tried to figure out why our plants bloom when they do and read a lot of formulas trying to predict this. It would make an interesting article. It would ensure that it will not get buried and get constant addition of relevant information.

I grow in the house in North East U.S. and find that some dendrobium species, and especially Ludisia, which bloom like clockwork in January, even when I have a cutting in water culture that has just started to put out roots.

However, some hybrids like Hawaera Lava Burst, Onc. hybrids such as Sharry Baby and Cattleya hybrids will bloom with sufficient light ( I supplement natural ligh with compact fluorescents) anytime the pseudobulb is mature enough. I have been able to bloom a lot of them for the Winter holidays by cutting off spikes that are projected to mature in the Summer.

They help me survive the Winter and have no competition from the profusion of fragrant roses from late Spring to Fall among other nonstop garden favorites.

[Ray]

Keep in mind that in controlled conditions, one can control blooming periods quite a bit more precisely, which is how cut flower businesses can have Easter cymbidium corsages, Mothers' Day catts, and phals for weddings pretty much any time of the year.

That is not to say that such control possibility is universal, you still have to select the hybrids that respond better (especially in the case of catts and cymbs).

[maitaman]

When I was with McLellan's in the late sixties and early seventies we had certain hybrids we wanted to cause to bloom for specific dates. The easiest to control are the one that respond to day length. We had a number of crosses that we could control almost exactly.
BUT, that is only one factor and depends on the genetic response of that cross.

[rogerman]

All i know and care about here is that my Catts, Vandas and many others flower in the cool season which is now. This time of the year the orchid sales are booming.