Help me bloom my Paphs.

[Singingirl96]

Hello All.

I purchased two Paphs last year in March. Both were blooming when I brought them home, and the plants were very healthy.
14 months later, the plants are still very healthy. There are new growths in both but they refuse to bloom.

I have them indoors by a east facing window. It gets a lot of morning sun. The medium is a fine fir-bark mix specially made for paphs, the temperature is 60 - 70, and the humidity has been low in the winter, but now is about 50%. I water it about twice a week when the medium is almost dry.

The new growths in one of the plants is growing one more leaf.

Do any of you have any suggestion of what else I could do to make them bloom? I should mention that I have several catts that bloomed and all of my phals bloomed, and they are all by the same window.

Here are some pictures of the plants today, but I'm also including images from when they were in bloom for reference.

They are Paph (Tree of Amanda x cochise) 'Hsiao' x Paph Hama Chilwin 'In-Charm' BM / TPS

and

Paph Lippehill 'In-Charm' x Paph. Valwin 'X'mas Robe' AM/TPS

[billc]

They certainly look very healthy. I don't grow any bulldog type paphs, but I find with the paphs I do grow that giving them 55 degrees at night for 3-4 weeks will help the hesitant ones to set a spike. They seem to like the 10-15 degree drop in temperature at night.

If that doesn't work, you could always try a stern talking to.

Bill

[kavanaru]

my tipp: lower temps at night this would induce them to bloom... slightly open window at night would help, then you would have them bloomin end of autumn /beginning of winter...


this works with my two complex bulsdogs...

[Lagoon]

It could take 18 months to 2 -1/2 years before any fan is mature enough to bloom. They look well grown & healthy.
I don't feel you're doing anything wrong. I think you just need to have abit more patience, they look almost there

[snow]

they look nice and healthy. complex paphs seem to bloom better with a little less light for me

[The Orchid Boy]

"It could take 18 months to 2 -1/2 years before any fan is mature enough to bloom."
I bought a paph magical venus in bud and it has three fans, two previously bloomed. The fan it is blooming on looks very, very small compared to the others. Is this fan immature? Can a paph bloom on an immature fan? This fan has 3 tiny leaves on it and one larger leaf. How can you tell when a fan is mature? Also, will another flower come up when this flower is done?

[NYCorchidman]

I agree with Gloria's comment. Most of my paphs are mottled leaf ones and they bloom twice a year. I begin to collect these complex hybrid types now so I can't tell you much, but I do have paph. Hsinying Yosemite. It was in bloom when I bought it in the spring of 2010. It has been growing very well and never flowered in the spring time this year. It kept on growing more fans. Now I am about to see two flowers in the very near future!!!

So, yeah, with some paphs, it does take some time when all is right.

To the orchid boy- Each additional fan is supposed to be of the same size as the previous ones or bigger if the plant is young. You can tell if the fan is mature by how many leaves are present.
If the previous growth had flowered, then you can take the number of leaves that growth had as a guiding line.
Some of my paphs will have three leaves before floweing while others make 10 leaves before they produce flowers. So it really depends on what varieties you have.