Hi Susan,
Do you mean the Orchid Fair April 2018 which was held in the Teak house?
I looked back at the winners of prizes for the show and there is no Masdevallia in the prizes so it might take a little longer to find the owner. I’ll send a few emails and see if I can find the owner
Marie Hourigan

Hiya Susan/Scott,

I successfully grow Masdevallia species: coccinea, ignea, veitchiana and barleana (bought from Akerne’s and Burnham’s). I have found that they much prefer a pure moss (ideally New Zealand moss) growing medium kept moist all year using only rainwater with a low dose orchid feed. I gleaned this advice from the YouTube channel “Brads Greenhouse”. Also it is important to position the plants in filtered sunshine as they hate strong sun and high temperatures (anything above 25 C is risky).
It has to be said the species above that I grow are regarded as the easier ones to cultivate and many other Masdevallias are notoriously difficult and demand cool misting and high humidity as found in their high altitude cloud forest native habit. Not sure about the measuresiana owner.

Hi Susan!

Are you sure you meant Masd measuresiana?

Any picture I found of it is white/really light pink/ivory, with pink in the middle and some light pink stripes…

It’s actually a hybrid of a red colored seed parent, Masd amabilis and a white colored pollen parent, Masd tovarensis,

I remember seeing red Masdevallias for sale (perhaps Masd coccinea) at the orchid show in 2018, can’t recall one that was shown, but I have been wrong before 🙂

I completely agree with Shane, I’ve read the same advice to keeping Masdies happy…OrchidKarma is another great source of info on Masdevallias, the lady who is writing the blog/owning the website is successfully growing many species and hybrids.

To be completely honest I am also finding them tricky to grow (no matter how much I try and follow all instructions)… You are not alone!!!

For some reason I find Restrepia and Pleurothallis species much easier to grow and flower…

I hope you find a replacement plant soon! Not sure if you will be able to find any for sale in Ireland, might in a private collection…

A few websites carrying Masd measuresiana, Akerne, Wichmann and Kopf Orchideen in the EU are having it for sale…I can only highly recommend the last two, I ordered several times from them and got always high quality plants in great health…I haven’t tried Akerne yet, but only heard great things about them.

Best of luck with the plant hunt!

Kind regards,

Eszter

Ladies,

The stunning red Masdevallia species on sale from Burnham’s at the 2018 orchid fair to which you might be discussing is M. ignea? (ignea meaning “volcanic”). I actually bought one and it flowers twice a year. I attach a picture of it.
Shane