Featured Plant of the Week (Cattleya Chocolate Drop)

Cattleya Chocolate Drop

Starting this week, BloomRite® Gardens will begin stocking a new variety of cattleya orchids called Chocolate Drop. These unique orchids are well liked for their texture and color, and fit perfectly into autumn offerings for your customers. Read on to find out what makes Chocolate Drop so striking.

Chocolate Drop stands about 12" tall, on one or sometimes two flower spikes surrounded by pairs of long, ovate leaves. Each spike can produce somewhere around 7 to 10 flowers each in a cluster at the top. The plant sits on a riotous tangle of roots, like many orchids. The flowers of Chocolate Drop are a burgundy or dark red, with yellow or mottled white throats. However, the two most notable features of the plant are its strong sweet fragrance, and its petal's very waxy sheen. The name Chocolate Drop probably comes from the flowers appearance before it blooms. It really does look like a drop of chocolate.

When it was registered in 1965, this plant was considered a hybrid of the two species Cattleya aurantiaca and Cattleya guttata. So for a while it was considered Cattleya Chocolate Drop. However, Cattleya aurantiaca was recently relocated out of the Cattleya genus and into the Guarianthe genus by botanists in 2003. So Cattleya aurantiaca became Guarianthe aurantiaca. Chocolate Drop was not the only hybrid orchid between the Cattleya and Guarianthe genres, so it was decided to create a new name for hybrids from them. Today, cultivars know these plants as Cattlianthe Chocolate Drop. It's one of dozens of Cattlianthe hybrids; including some of which Chocolate Drop is a parent!

Regardless of its name, one thing it inherits from both parent species is its epiphytic nature. Epiphytes are plants that grow on other plants non-parasitically. Some other famous examples include Tillandsia, bromeliads, and mosses. A number of orchid species are like this, and possess aerial roots, which are essentially above ground roots. This is an adaptation suited to the humid jungles of South America where the towering canopies of the trees can block out the sun at the ground. So instead Cattleyas hitch a ride, growing on the trunks and branches of its host to get some of the diffuse light that bleeds through.

Unsurprisingly, matching these conditions is the key to caring for Cattleya Chocolate Drop. Orchid bark is the preferred potting medium for the plant, or really anything else that drains very well. It's important to keep it moist, but like most orchids allowing it to sit in water is detrimental. Chocolate Drop can apparently handle a reasonable range of temperatures and light levels, making it a good 'beginner' orchid. It will adapt to average indoor temperatures, and will manage with average indoor humidity. Medium or bright indirect light indoors is the best location for it; a south facing window sill with a thin diffuse curtain is a good place. Chocolate drop typically blooms in late August or September and its flowers should last about two months. If care is kept up, they should return again next year.

Cattleya Chocolate Drop is available now at BloomRite® Gardens for $14.95 per plant.