A common question: “My orchids are growing well and have been putting out new leaves and roots. Why haven’t they bloomed yet?”
(Note that this is NOT the same question as “Why won’t my orchids RE-BLOOM for me?” although the answer overlaps with the one presented here.)
There are three major reasons why your orchids haven’t bloomed:
1) It is the wrong season for blooming. While some orchids can bloom any time of the year, most have a typical blooming season. If you got an orchid a few months ago (and they weren’t in bloom), it may simply be that blooming season hasn’t yet arrived.
2) They are still too young to bloom. Most orchids need to reach a certain size (which varies for type to type) before they’re mature enough to bloom. Since there are so many different types of orchids, and what constitutes blooming size is not the same for different types and varieties, it is best to check with your orchid vendor on the size that you purchased, as it may be that your orchid will need to grow a bit more before it will bloom. Here at Orchid Insanity, we offer plants from small seedling size (SD1 or SD2), Near Blooming Size (NBS), and Blooming Size (BS). Depending on the type of orchid, a seedling might take anywhere from 1 to 4+ years to reach Blooming Size. Near Blooming Size plants are generally 12 – 18 months from reaching Blooming Size, but again, that varies depending on the type orchid. A Blooming Size plant is of a size that is typically capable of blooming.
3) Growing conditions can have a big effect on whether orchids bloom. Orchids grown in the home may put on plenty of new leaves and extend roots, but not bloom because they’re not getting enough light, or the temperature doesn’t drop low enough. In the wild, orchids (and all plants) adjust to the change in seasons. Typical growing conditions indoors may mask the change in seasons, and the plant continues on with vegetative growth (i.e., growing more leaves), but doesn’t know that it’s time to initiate flowering. In cases like this, you’ll need to find out what the orchid needs in order to start its blooming program, and this will differ depending on variety.
The best person to ask is the original grower; find out their growing conditions for the type of orchid(s) you have, and you’ll be on your way to getting your plants to bloom!
There are three main types of pots, and have different characteristics that you’ll want to keep in mind. All three types come in a range of sizes and variations, but the key idea is that they affect water evaporation from the media differently.
The three kinds are:
1) Plastic
2) Wooden/air slat and net pots
3) Terra cotta (unglazed)
All orchid pots need to have drainage. Many decorative vases do not have any drainage holes, and growing orchids in containers with no drainage is not something I’d recommend (although I’ve seen it done before, usually by some clueless grower, and always leave puzzled as to why it worked for that plant). You can use a decorative vase if you keep the orchid in a plastic pot that fits inside the vase. When you need to water, just take the plant in the plastic pot out.
PLASTIC POTS
Plastic pots are cheap, abundant, and reusable. They also work very well. Just select the right size pot for your plant’s root system (not too big, and not too small), fill it with your plant and moistened media (this tip is for new growers who may not know to do this).
WOODEN AIR SLAT POTS AND PLASTIC NET POTS
These aren’t really pots so much as open-air receptacles for holding orchids. You use this kind of container when you want a lot of air movement around your orchid and extra aeration at the root zone. Many growers prefer to use sphagnum moss in these slat/net pots, but if you use a fine mesh liner, you can use bark as well.
The thing to keep in mind is that the media will dry out much more quickly in these slat/net pots, and that’s kind of the point. Growing in pots like this, especially hung outside under shade, means you’ll get lots of air movement around the plant and the media, and hence plenty of evaporation. This high rate of evaporation means you can water more frequently, and if the plant is growing well, you can get some very robust growth for orchids suited to this style of growing (not all are). Generally epiphytic orchids will do very well grown like this.
UNGLAZED TERRA COTTA POTS
Many skilled orchid growers prefer using unglazed terra cotta pots. They’re cheap and easy to find. Unglazed terra cotta has one tremendous advantage over the other pot types: the micropores in the terra cotta wick away moisture from the media AND reduce the temperature at the root zone. With good air movement around the pot, you’ll have essentially created an evaporative cooler for your orchid!
While many orchids don’t really care too much about what kinds of pots their grown in, one of the best Masdevallia growers I’ve known grew all of his Masdies and Pleurothallids in unglazed terra cotta. He used New Zealand Sphagnum Moss (often with a Styrofoam peanut(s) at the bottom of the pot), and the plants grew to perfection. Of course, his greenhouse conditions also contributed mightily to his success, but a home grower can do well with unglazed terra cotta, too.
If you grow in an area that is generally known to be too hot to grow, say, Masdevallias, growing in terra cotta might just work. I read years ago of some growers in Louisiana who did just this, growing Masdevallias mounted to terra cotta shingles. Certainly worth trying if you live in a hot area but have become obsessed with some cool-growing orchids!
One key concept here: the more evaporative your pot, the more often you can water. The more often you can water (without keeping the roots overly wet), the faster the plant can take up nutrients and grow. If you had a plant growing in media/pot/conditions that you could water in the morning, and would dry out to mild dampness by evening, AND the plant was receiving enough light to photosynthesize at an optimal rate, in theory you could water every day and get some amazing growth. This is an experiment I’ve had in mind for quite some time, and once we set it up and get some long-term results, we’ll definitely post it on our website (orchidinsanity.com).
I suspect that many orchids in the jungle naturally experience this kind of near-optimal growth conditions – aerated roots, high humidity, the right amount of light, and daily rain, picking up plenty of detritus, dead bugs, and bird poop for nutrition.
Anyways, all that being said, plastic pots work just fine. If you’re a new grower, start with regular plastic pots. While it is tempting to try the other types of pots with all this talk of evaporative cooling and optimal growth, the other kinds of pots have too many variables to think about for an inexperienced grower, and when you’re starting out, you want to reduce the number of variables to a bare minimum so that you can develop a baseline of experience for what works for you. I wish I had done this when I first started out, but I was too excited about optimizing conditions when, really, I hardly had any experience. It was a very costly mistake, and a lot of orchid paid with their lives because of my impatience and ineptitude.
(The following post was written in 2009, on my previous but now-defunct blog, slipperorchidblog.com. For those who don’t know about Phrag. kovachii, it had been discovered not too long before 2009 and probably was one of the biggest orchid finds in the previous 100 years.)
We’re all passionate about orchids. If you’re reading this, you really, really like orchids. Some people like them so much, though, that they will steal them when they can.
No, I’m not talking about stealing from the jungle.
I’m talking about people who actually will steal orchids outright. Here are a few stories:
1) One grower I know had to step away to take a call while a customer remained unattended in the greenhouse. When the grower came back, what did he see, but the customer with toothpick in hand swiping pollen from a prized plant! The customer/thief was sent packing quite quickly.
2) Another story from a very reliable source: an orchid judge/official was left alone in a greenhouse full of expensive stud plants. The judge decided to help himself/herself to a division of an excellent specimen. And by division, I don’t mean something already divided and potted up. This person was caught pulling the stud plant out of pot, and trying to break off a piece of it! Somehow, the “Oh,-I-forgot-that-I’m-not-supposed-to-do-that” excuse that works so well with tax-deadbeat politicians doesn’t work so well in the real world or orchids. Well, maybe I shouldn’t be surprised, since orchid judging is so political.
3) I once visited the greenhouse of a commercial grower, and we got to talking about Phrag. kovachii. In my orchid envy, I asked if he had any.
The owner answered, tersely, “Yes.”
“Oh, I’d love to see them. Can you show them to me?” I asked, politely.
“No.”
I was puzzled. Growers are usually excited to show off the new stuff. “Why not?” I asked. “Were they obtained illegally?”
“No, they are all legal. But I can’t show them to you because of what happened previously when I did show them to someone. As the customer was leaving, I had to ask him to please remove and return the kovachii plants that were sticking out of his pocket. So I’m not showing the kovachii’s to anyone anymore.”
Me: “Wow. OK. I understand.”
4) I was having an open house at my nursery, and a bunch of people came over. While I was talking with a small crowd, I noticed the wife of a very prominent orchid person simply pick up a lovely Paph in full bloom, and walk out the door. She came back into the greenhouse a few minutes later (without the Paph), and rejoined her husband. Because the husband of the woman is very prominent in the orchid world (and I mean internationally known), I didn’t want to make a scene. He ended up buying some other orchids (of a completely different type). I’m not sure if he was aware of what his wife had done but I would imagine that with his level of orchid expertise, he would’ve spotted the purloned Paph as soon as he saw it, probably on the way home. Well, he had done me a very kind turn in the past, and I didn’t want to cause a scene that would have embarrassed him or anyone else, so I just stayed quiet about it.
Everyone who has worked in a retail setting has funny, frustrating, infuriating, and mind-bending stories of customer interactions. I’m guessing that fast food is the worst, followed by 7-11, and then liquor stores. Online orchid retail may not be in the top five, or even the top ten, but we’ve got plenty to contribute to the annals of retail hilarity and asininity. Here’s one memorable exchange with a customer who started off with a supercilious attitude, and despite my clear explanations, still could not understand what was being explained.
THE SCENE: A Customer saw one of our “mystery” Cymbidium listings (i.e., a “potluck”/random/no_ID_tag Cym plant). The listing has as its front image a montage of various Cymbidium flowers overlaid with questions marks.
CUSTOMER: What is the green cymbidium orchid in the picture?
ME: Hi, Thanks for your interest. The photos are simply random photos of various types of Cymbidiums, not necessarily from the group of plants we have, that comprise “mystery” or plants with no id tags.
If you’re looking for a green Cymbidium from us, you might consider “Zabala” or “Enzan Olive” both of which are available.
CUSTOMER: No I simply trying to get the name of that green orchids . The ones u have are slightly different. It’s strange people selling things and don’t know what they are more than an orchid
ME: The photos are simply random photos of various types of Cymbidiums, not necessarily from the group of plants we have that we’ve designated as “mystery” or no-identification plants.
CUSTOMER: But u have no knowledge period of scientific names it would be good for you to learn
[OK, at this point, the Customer has stepped from ignorant to borderline insulting. Telling me that I have “no knowledge period” of scientific names, well, them’s fightin’ words.]
ME: Well, I do have a Ph.D. in genetics, so I think I know a few things. Plus, I’ve got about 50,000 orchids of different species, and have given orchid talks all over. So this is actually the first time that someone has said that I don’t know what I’m talking about when it comes to orchids…
So thanks for the advice to learn more about scientific names. You should read my orchid book sometime — I’ll be happy to send you a free copy.
CUSTOMER: You don’t understand what I’m saying then all I’m asking is hey you sell orchids so you should know the name of the green one from a pic your provided I’m not trying to buy it from you. Just would like the name of it. I wasn’t even trying to be rude [yes, a likely story] obviously you are I just needed extra help to have a traumatic brain injury!
ME: You said that I ought to learn about scientific names [see above]. Well, this is a weird question to ask about a random orchid photo, but I now understand the issue. You appear not to know the difference between an orchid species and an orchid hybrid. Species plants are what you find naturally occurring in the jungle. Hybrids are usually man-made by breeding related species and producing something that doesn’t exist already in nature.
The vast majority of orchids available for sale are HYBRIDS. Hybrids do not have pure SCIENTIFIC names, which for some reason you thought I should learn more about. All orchids have a genus, in this case, the genus “Cymbidium”. So the green one is actually called Cymbidium Eaglewood Kana. This is NOT a scientific name, BECAUSE IT IS A MAN-MADE HYBRID.
Species plants from nature are given SCIENTIFIC names, and by convention over the past 500 years, the names are in Latin. There are about 100 known Cymbidium species out in the jungles of the world. Each of them has been given a SCIENTIFIC name in Latin. For example, Cymbidium aloifolium, Cymbidium floribundum, Cymbidium traceyanum, etc. There are strict rules governing the naming of naturally occurring species.
The Cymbidium flowers shown in my advertisement photo are all hybrids, and don’t have scientific names. They illustrate the idea that a buyer would be getting a random no ID plant which I make clear in the description.
Now, you WERE being rude when you said the following:
“But u have no knowledge period of scientific names it would be good for you to learn”
You don’t know me at all, but still accused me of having no scientific knowledge and that I ought to learn.
But, your problem is that you assumed that all of the orchids in the photo have SCIENTIFIC names. They do not because they are HYBRIDS.
It appears you don’t know much about orchids, so let me return your advice to me: “it would be good for you to learn.” I hope this has been a helpful orchid lesson for you!
CUSTOMER: Well I am sorry I approached it in that way and while I’m still confused I will drop the matter. What you see is me being confused not nessecarily mean or but sorry just the same
Well, she may still be confused, but at least she apologized at the end.
Still…Is it too much to ask for a bit more civility, and restraint of one’s ignorance, on the internet? Who am I kidding? Of course it’s too much to ask!
