How long should I expect for my oncidiums to mature and bloom?

[sewagner86]

I feel silly. I never thought about how long it could potentially take for my little plants to fully mature to bloom. I thought about it and tried researching but lack finding anything besides the sellers ad saying it should bloom within the year, which i kind of find a little hard to believe. These little plants are considered what I am assuming as plug size. I have a totally of 5 oncidiums. 2 have 1 psuedo bulb and 1 has 2. The 2 others look just like leaves....almost like a tuft of grass. I am attaching pictures of each one. Either way, I am going to enjoy them as they grow and learn about them (along with one baby cattleya). This was my first plant purchase in a long time and won't be getting anymore for a while as I want to at least slightly master these babies before adding on any more. Thanks for the help!!!

[estación seca]

With proper care most of those should flower in 2022. Oncidium intergeneric hybrids tend to grow continuously. If you can keep them warm and brightly lit all year, each growth will be larger than the previous. Before you know it a newly matured growth will put up a spike.

For example, I received a very small Oncidium Sharry Baby in a 2" pot in October 2020. It was much smaller than any of your plants. I put it into a 1-liter/quart semihydroponic pot in spring 2021. It began flowering in December 2021. This is known for being one of the most vigorous Oncidiums, but your Hilo Bay, Sunny Daze and Pacific Pagan might surprise you.

[nemesis]

They are really cute, and congrats on the purchase. Very nice hybrids. keep us apprized! I'd love to live vicariously through you lol.

[ArronOB]

It’s not often I get to disagree with Estacion Seca, but I’m going to have to this time. Not this year, but maybe 50% of that size Oncidium hybrid would flower next year and 50% the year after.

I grow a lot of Oncidium hybrids including most of those you are holding. My Pacific pagan and Hilo bay both did their first time flowering last year - I bought them in 2020 but they were about double your plants’ size.

I pulled from my collection 3 oncid hybrids doing their first time flowering and took a photo - see below. These are (L to r) Beallara big shot, Vuyl Frans nymph and Wils. Pacific perspective. Ones like the big shot will flower early because although the individual flower is very large the combined mass of the flower spike is not great so a young plant will have sufficient reserves to flower. On the right hand side, you can see the flower spike on pacific perspective is big and thick and it will have multiple side branches and many flowers so it’s mass is huge, equivalent to two or three pseudobulbs - so it takes a fairly mature plant to produce such a spike. The plant in the middle has a more moderately sized spike which doesn’t branch, but it is one of those Oncids that never has a great ratio of flower mass to green mass. Hybrids like pacific perspective don’t seem to have a mechanism for scaling down the size of the flower for a first flowering - it’s all or nothing.

In any case they are great little plants. I love oncidium hybrids - even their green grassy leaves are attractive i think. I like the fact that the range of flower forms and colours is just about endless. Species oncids I’m not so keen on. I also prefer to buy my plants at that size, or even smaller. Then you can grow them right through to flowering and you get the ‘flowering dividend’ - the knowledge that you did it yourself. Then I like to carry on growing them until they become ‘specimen size’ - which is a genuine achievement in our conditions and in fact most don’t make it. I know it’s probably silly but I will never understand why people buy plants in flower - where is the achievement? Now I feel like doing some online plant shopping.

[Ray]

“How soon” is directly relatable to “how good” your culture is.

[ArronOB]

Originally Posted by Ray

“How soon” is directly relatable to “how good” your culture is.

Partially relatable - surely

[claypot]

I agree with Arron. Don't be in a rush to see flowers on such young plants. Like all young things it is vitally important for the plants to build a good strong structure. Indeed, many people cut first spikes off to allow the plants to build - you need strength to go into the plant not the flowers while they are young. Patience is key in orchid growing and there is always a danger of letting very young plants exhaust themselves to death putting up spikes before they have sufficiently strong constitution.

[Shadeflower]

one of the reasons I left was exactly because the usual experts just end up giving lazy answers without much experience. Do you think ES grows Oncidiums like we can in the UK?
His climate is akin to growing on mars which is why he pretends to know how to grow them.
I didn't just log back on to be a grumpy git. I just wanted to point out that the one thing I did learn from OB is that once you disagree with ES about 80% of the time have you reached a point of being a good grower.
Of course it won't be mature this year yet.
Not a in a million years (that it will be mature this year)

[sewagner86]

I actually didn't expect at all for them to flower this year. I figured I have 2 to 3 years before I do even see anything flower-ish on the plants. I have absolutely no experience with oncidiums.....only phalaenopsis orchids that have already been in bloom. I am excited, but I do want this little baby plants to be strong and healthy first and foremost. Just wanted to hear others opinions/experiences growing this little plants!

Thanks!!!

[Mr.Fakename]

Originally Posted by Shadeflower

I didn't just log back on to be a grumpy git. I just wanted to point out that the one thing I did learn from OB is that once you disagree with ES about 80% of the time have you reached a point of being a good grower.
Of course it won't be mature this year yet.
Not a in a million years (that it will be mature this year)

What puzzles me here, is that if you're so mad at people from the OB, why are you stalking them and randomly logging in to throw shade at them?

Perhaps it would be better for your sanity - and ours - if you ditched this toxic behaviour.