We are spending today setting up our display and sales table at the RHS London International Orchid Show and so it is a time we hope to have lots of our favourite spring orchids looking their best. One of these is Masdevallia decumana and Annie’s mounted plant has come up  trumps with a mass of flowers and buds about to pop open. It will be a pleasure to find a perfect spot for this plant on our display.

Masdevallia decumana (the name means large flowered Masdevallia) is native to cloud forests in Ecuador and Peru from 1000-2500m. We find it enjoys Cool Americas (Min 12C) where it is kept well watered all year. We grow it both mounted like this one and in a pot but prefer mounted as the flowers are produced horizontally from the plant and present so much better mounted rather than being lost against other pots when potted.

One point we find is that the flowers do seem to tire the plant and so we cut them off once thay have been out a couple of weeks to keep the plant growing to its full potential.