The orchids he grows are native to areas without constant rainfall like you would have in the tropics. I learned the Green Fly orchids occur all over my corner of SC in trees with the Resurrection Fern just like you mentioned. Obviously I don't look up often enough.
His plants are small statured to begin with, like the kingianums which are listed as "probably hardy", although he has not tested them himself. His slides showed large blooms many being highly scented. None of his plants were blooming yesterday but there were lots of spent spikes from flowering earlier this summer. He says many bloom several times a year and others only bloom in the winter.
Ursula, 15 degrees in SC is much different from the same in NJ, it usually only stays cold for an hour or two in the mornings here then it warms up some. The winter of 2014 was our coldest in history and all the plants he brought yesterday had been outside, unprotected through that winter.
He got to talking about how and why air currents flowing down the east coast of the US are different from air currents flowing down the west coast then he went into longitude and latitude numbers here and in Asia and at that point he lost us all. I would love to hear this guy again and record him so I could go back, listen slowly, and try and understand more of what he was saying.
