Grammatophyllum is a very famous orchid genus. Famous for its titanic sizes – Grammatophyllum speciosum, the type species, is sometimes called Giant Orchid for its dimensions – it is the biggest orchid in the world. With the pseudobulbs up to three meters and the weight up to one ton this orchid is an amazing threat for trees – yes, this is epiphytic species (and sometimes terrestrial, not all trees can stand such a giant and simply crush, after tree’s death orchid continues to grow on tree’s remnants).
By orchidgalore from New York, USA – Ginormous GrammatophyllumUploaded by Orchi, CC BY 2.0
This orchid genus is of Asian origin and may be seen in tropical forests of Asia, Indonesia, Phillipines, New Guinea, and Pacific islands. This genus is closely related to Cymbidium genus (and there are some hybrids between these genera such as Grammatocymbidium Lovely Melody ‘Sweet’), but they have distinct morphology.
The most popular Grammatophyllum speciosum, Grammatophyllum scriptum and related species (such as Grammatophyllum wallisii ) have long, cane pseudobulbs with numerous leaves, other species have more spherical pseudobulbs with fewer leaves in the upper part of a pseudobulb. Flowers are born in long, arching racemes. Flowers are usually green, yellow or brown with purple dots on large sepals and petals, lip is usually small. Grammatophyllum speciosum is giant, and its flowers are giant too – 5 to 8 inches, fragrant and showy – yellow with purple dots. Grammatophyllum scriptum is much smaller – its pseudobulbs up to 7-9 inches long (but he is also a large to giant plant, it is only in comparison to Grammatophyllum speciosum “small”) and with much smaller flowers – up to two inches, green with brown on it and not fragrant. However, Grammatophyllum scriptum (sometimes called Bell Orchid) is much more suitable to indoor orchid growing than Grammatophyllum speciosum due to its more compact sizes. You should remember that Grammatophyllum orchids are not only the biggest orchids in the world, they’re the fastest growing orchids. Healthy, a properly grown Grammatophyllum plant can double its size in one year.
Grammatophyllum orchid care is quite simple – they are warm to hot growing orchids, prefer full sunlight (you should give it so many sunlight as possible), ample watering and they’re really heavy feeders – to grow fast, they need a lot of balanced fertilizers.
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