Grammatocymbidium lovely melody 'lipstick'

[NikkiM]

Could someone please help me figure this plant out? I received this about 4 months ago, and it is giving me two new growths. My question on this is how large will this plant get? How long til it's blooming size? If anyone can help I would appreciate it!

[estación seca]

Your plant looks nice.

Grammatophyllums are large to enormous, warm-growing plants. People have bred them with cooler-growing Cymbidiums in an attempt to produce plants like Cymbidiums that will flower in warmer areas. From what I have read they are closer in size to the Cymbidium parents, which is nice.

I have a smaller plant of Grammatocymbidium Lovely Melody 'Lipstick' than yours. It is also growing vigorously. I saw a number of sites with people saying it grows to about a foot tall (32cm), but other photos I found show it getting about 3 feet tall (90cm.) My guess would be it gets bigger if given a large pot. You can see a photo in this forum here:
Sunday morning blooms
If you search the Internet on the name you will find lots of photos of this plant.

The proper way to write the name is Grammatocymbidium Lovely Melody 'Lipstick' . The cross Grammatophyllum citrinum x Cymbidium ensifolium is known as Grammatocymbidium Lovely Melody. One clone was selected out and given the clonal name 'Lipstick' . This clone has a red lip. I also saw photos of other clones which are all green-yellow.

[NikkiM]

Thank you! I haven't found too much info on this. I have seen photos, but most don't give a full picture of the plant. Is it blooming size or close to it?

[estación seca]

Yours isn't as big as the ones in the photos I've seen online blooming. Mine is smaller than yours. The ones I see blooming online are in what appear to be at least 6" / 15cm square pots or 1 gallon / 3.7 liter nursery pots. Some look even better in much larger pots.

In semi-hydroponics, which looks like what you are using, you can use a very large pot for a tiny seedling. With most orchid media, you should only increase pot size gradually, as the plant grows. I have begun putting my Cymbidium seedlings directly into 2-quart / 2 liter S/H pots. The inventor of S/H growing, Ray Barkalow, a member here, has written he has grown a lot of Chinese Cymbidiums in S/H and they do very well.

A lot of people say orchids don't need much fertilizer. Most of the Cymbidium growers I have known fertilize like crazy. They can grow much faster than most other orchids. I also try to fertilize them a lot.

[PaphMadMan]

A couple things...

This cross is made with the species Grammatophyllum scriptum. No species called Grammatophyllum citrinum has ever been published, though the name may have been used in horticulture. The closest is Gram. scriptum f. citrinum, but this would still be Grammatocymbidium Lovely Melody no matter what form of Gram. scriptum was used.

Cym. ensifolium is quite a small species compared to the classic hybrid Cyms and their ancestors, and it comes from warm lowland areas. This helps make this a much smaller plant than a Grammatophyllum, especially it will bloom at a relatively small size. And since Cym. ensifolium is a warm growing lowland species there is no cool growing ancestry to complicate the culture of this hybrid. It is a warm growing plant that can be treated like Grammatophyllum in all ways.

This plant will eventually get quite large though not nearly as large as the Grammatophyllum parent, but it should be able to start blooming much smaller. Your plant can probably bloom by next year, when the next set of growths matures. If the ultimate large size becomes a problem you can plan to divide it every couple years and keep a piece just big enough to bloom. It should recovery quickly from dividing/repotting and you will always have divisions to give away to help create more orchid addicts.

[NikkiM]

Thank you to both of you for the information! So the plant should get large but not humongous. So one year out till blooming. I can deal with that. I'll just have to be patient. Oh wait... you always have to be patient with orchids.

where do you guys find all this information?