On June 5, 2023, I re-collected the temperature, humidity, and flower abudance of azalea in 2 areas for my study. The area of study is my garden in Tokyo, Japan. I purchased multiple outdoor digital themometer/hygrometers to measure the locations of interest at once (I bought 9, enough to cover the area of my samples). I measured the temperature/humidity of the areas of interested from 5:00 (sunrise) to 18:00 (sunset) to see how atmospheric factors vary over the course of the day depending on the location, and saw how that affected the flower abudnance of azalea.
The first location I chose was an area where the azalea flowers only receive morning sun and was in the shade while the harsh afternoon sun is out. The second location was an area where azalea flowers receive the harsh afternoon sun. I defined afternoon sun as sun exposure after 14:00. I took 4 samples from the first location (“morning sun” area) and 5 samples from the second location (“afternoon sun” area). In the beginning, I was looking at 3 different locations for more sun exposure variety – 1st with morning sun exposure, 2nd with afternoon sun exposure, and the 3rd with no sun exposure at all. However, I only had one sample for the 3rd location so I decided to exclude this location as I did not have enough samples to derive a meaningful result. I also initially only had 2 replicates in each area, so I increased it to 4-5 replicates. I would have wanted to have more than 5 replicates each, but I was unfortunately limited to 4-5. I went outside my garden to look for more replicates, but I could only find samples in front of public buildings (someone’s apartment, supermarket, etc) and the difficulty was that I needed to be there from 5am in the morning to 6pm at night, and I needed to take measurements every hour for every sample. I needed a location where I allowed to take measurements, was physically able to be there for my sample every hour, and provided the environmental conditions that I was looking for, which was more difficult that I had imagined. Additionally, if I waited too long to find locations we would have entered the monsoon season, which would most likely ruin all the azalea flowers. I realize that manipulative experiments may have been easier to perform in places like Tokyo where greenery is scarce. Nevertheless, I was committed to my azaleas in the garden as I saw a pattern between sun exposure and flower abudance.
Based on my preliminary measurements, I found that areas of morning sun and afternoon sun had approximately the same amount of total sunlight hours (Morning: 6.25h/Afternoon: 6.4h) but differed in mean temp (26.9℃/29.4℃) and humidity (52%/46%) as predicted. I also noticed that there was a greater difference in mean temperature (30.7℃/37.8℃) and mean humidity (48%/33%) during the hours of sun exposure. I might want to do more research on the maximum tolerance for azalea flowers and see if these temp/humdity values exceed their tolerance, and if so, how that might affect flower abudance.
Sounds like things are coming along!