Description
Dracula benedictii. Recently repotted blooming size plant in a 3" net pot.
This species produces small (about the size of a quarter with sepals that are 1" long) mahogany colored (white on the backside of the sepals) flowers that truly have a monkey face! Flowers late winter-summer for us and a plant the size of the one in this listing can produce 5-10 flower spikes all at once. Not only that, each flower spike will produce 2-4 flowers in succession over a period of a couple of months. The 2-3" flower spikes emerge around the margin of the plant and head down and hug the basket. The flowers face down. When seen from below it looks like a pack of dark-furred mini monkeys staring down at you! should be hung in a basket.
These plants are wonderful to own if you can give them what they want. Dracula culture is simple; cool, moist, and shady. Minimum low temp of 46 degrees F and a high of around 85. Anything over 80, keep the plant really wet. We like to water them morning and evening at least a couple of times a week in the summer. Folks with greenhouses that have swamp coolers grow them directly in front of the cooler. We give our plants lots of light in the winter and lots of shade in the summer. The nice thing about this group is if you can grow one Drac you can pretty much grow them all. Like their cousins the Masdevallias, when these plants are happy they grow like weeds and are prolific flowerers.
Here at Orchids For The People we love our Draculas! This group of orchids is one of the reasons the boss initially became interested in growing orchids. When a professor of his told the story of Dracula vampira, no one in the class believed anyone could give a plant such a crazy name. After a little research (this was before orchidspecies.com!) he found out low and behold there was such a thing. Thus began a twenty-five-year excursion through the orchid world.