This came through on one of my mailing lists in response to why a plant dropped it's leaves. Interesting about insulation from the cold. The info about dormant phase is pretty much what we say over and over.

Parijat - is a semi-deciduous plant, which means, it may lose its leaves during unfavorable conditions such as drought, cold, low light and/or humidity. In your case, the plant dropped leaves because of the stress of moving indoors that includes reducing light and humidity levels. When a tropical plant loses leaves during winter, this means it goes into a dormant stage. If this happens, you need to reduce watering and keep the plant on a dry side, water in only when the top level of the soil feels dry to touch. Do not fertilize.
Try to place the plant in a well-lit spot such as a windowsill. If the windowsill and the window glass feel too cold for touch during wintertime, you may place a sheet of a Styrofoam underneath the pot, and a sheet of a bubble-wrap between the plant and the window glass, to create an extra barrier from cold. The plant may re-leaf during wintertime; if not, it may wait until spring, be patient.
Bring it back into outdoor light when minimum temperatures rise above 65F and resume fertilizing.

The R-values for bubble wrap and styrofoam are not very high (meaning they are not amazing insulators). The product with the highest R-value is vacuum insulated glass windows at R-45 (US units, mentioned as a reference). Styrofoam's R-5 and foil faced bubble wrap is R-1. My guess would be that generic translucent bubble wrap would be less than the foil faced. It's a nice suggestion but I don't think bubble wrap would do much in terms of cold protection unless you have drafty windows and it is deflecting the draft.


(Sorry if this seems like a dick post. It started out as me posting 'I wonder what their R-values are.', which of course escalated to me looking things up for myself. I decided to share the values and commentary because I consider those materials unsightly and I don't want to be looking at them unnecessarily. I'm sure others and/or the people they co-habitate with would feel the same if they knew how effective they were as insulators.)

No problem with me. Everything you said is correct, and you really weren't nasty about it.

I wondered about appearance (and wondered what my wife would say...) but the idea of insulation in not bad. I don't think it will be an issue with me, since we have so few days and nights of real cold, but it is an interesting idea to pass on to those with trees indoors. His description of what happens matches the three tropicals I have exactly, and probably others.