Rhyncovanda Colmarie - What am I doing wrong?

[smweaver]

I have had this plant for three years, and I haven't had any luck getting it to bloom. It's a fairly large orchid, with a leafspan just over twenty inches, and it's very nicely established in an eight-inch clay pot with lots of thick roots. It gets the same amount of light as my Rhynchostylis gigantea (one of its parents) during the winter; during the summer it goes outside where it gets significantly more light than Rhy. gigantea. Does anyone know of any "tricks" to get this hybrid to bloom? It's a healthy plant, but it seems quite content to simply produce larger leaves throughout the year rather than producing a flower spike. If this isn't a winter-blooming plant, perhaps I'm expecting spikes at the wrong time of year. What's especially frustrating is that my Rhy. gigantea flowers reliable every winter without any coaxing on my part. Any advice will be greatly appreciated.

Steve

[Angurek]

Either the plant is still too young, or you may have been feeding it too much nitrogen. From my experience, if you give the vandaceous plants too much nitrogen, their blooming will be inhibited a bit. I have a Vanda sanderiana, and it didn't bloom for a year, even though it was receiving the right light and moisture. The mistake I was making was that I was giving it too much nitrogen-rich fertilizer.

Either way, good luck with that plant. It looks great!