As January continues cold and bright we have a feast of Masdevallias flowering in the collection and today we bring you one of our real favourites – a small growing species with enormous dramatic flowers.

Masdevallia setacea is found from Colombia to Peru and has flowers considerably larger than the plant. Including the long yellow tails to the sepals the flowers are 14cm from top to bottom. For us the species flowers irregularly throughout the year which probably reflects the even conditions it finds in its cloud forest home from 1400-2400m altitude.

The plant is does well mounted, in baskets or in pots in our cool Americas section (Min 12C) well watered all year.