A medium-sized, highly prized epiphytic orchid. It is celebrated for its incredibly complex, leopard-spotted flowers and an intense, sweet fragrance reminiscent of vanilla custard, mocha, and ripe banana. The flowers are large, waxy, cream-to-yellow blooms (8 to 12 cm wide) covered in fine reddish-brown spots. It produces a single, large, pleated, leathery leaf up to 45 cm long out of a thick, egg-shaped pseudobulb. You must never plant a Stanhopea in a standard pot. Because the pendulous flower spikes push out from the base of the pseudobulbs and grow straight down, planting them in normal containers will trap the buds, causing them to rot inside the medium. They must always be grown in open-slatted wire or wooden baskets lined with loose sphagnum moss or coconut fibre so the flowers can punch through the bottom.
