UNDER THE MICROSCOPE
Dr. Raymund W. Lo
Wow, I didn’t imagine I could cause such a furor over a tweet I sent two days ago. In it, I put a photo collage of an orchid hybrid I named after Vice President Leni Robredo with a comment: “Seven years from pollination to blooming. A labor of love for one who labors for Filipinos.” Soon after, my friends were deluging my Viber feed with congratulations and comments. Then the Twitterverse exploded with tens of thousands of likes, comments, and retweets! Facebook followed. News organizations carried it during the day. I got a call for an interview. The feed also attracted the usual trolls who got triggered by a pink orchid, of all things!
Allow me to backtrack on the story behind the orchid hybrid, since the comment elicited questions on why it took seven years. It all starts with the decision to make a hybrid. Humankind has been making hybrids of all sorts of plants and animals for the longest time, producing useful, interesting, and beautiful varieties of rice, fruits, and others. Whether you are successful or not depends on your knowledge, experience, and expertise, aside from some luck, of course, as results can be quite unpredictable. It’s a mix of art and science.
In this case, I had two orchids in flower at the same time and wondered what would result if I pollinated one with the other. The first was a yellow flower with a red lip, while the other was a pure red but smaller than the first. Based on what I’d read and seen in orchid literature and shows, I imagined the resulting hybrid would be intermediate in size between the two, and the colors would range from yellow to red with anything in between. It would also depend on the background of the two parents, which are complex hybrids themselves, having been produced from many species in the two genera, Rhyncholaelia and Cattleya. So, it's often very unpredictable.
Rlc. Leni Robredo
Once the flower is successfully fertilized, it develops into a seed pod, which takes four months to have viable seed, by which time it is harvested and sent to a plant laboratory for sowing on sterile media. If the seeds grow, it takes from a year upwards to have little seedlings, which can be planted in select media.
It takes several years to grow the seedlings into flowering plants; in this case, seven years. First sown in 2010, it flowered in 2017. There were many cultivars or varieties that were produced, and I kept the photos of these flowers on file while mulling over what to name this particular hybrid.
There is only one registration authority for plant names in the whole world: the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) in the United Kingdom. Orchids are named for important persons in the hybridizer’s reckoning, whether to honor the memory of loved ones, as in the case of a hybrid I named after my mother, Ric. Memoria Corazon Lo, or public figures, heads of state, artists, poets. The Singapore Botanic Gardens has been naming orchids after visiting dignitaries.
This particular hybrid I elected to name after our Vice President Leni Robredo, it being in her campaign color, pink.
Why her? I had been despairing over where this country was going, seeing the precipitous slide to a failed state where human rights and lives are of little importance, where decency and honesty are regarded as dispensable virtues, and the rich and powerful get away with plunder.
It was an agonizing time when the same cast of characters filed their certificates of candidacy for president one after the other while I waited for one to make that decision. When, after much reflection and prayers, she did announce it, my heart jumped for joy. I had several hybrids waiting to be named, hoping she would choose a campaign color I had flowers of. So, when she went for pink, I immediately searched my photo library for one and found it.
On Oct. 7, 2021, I applied for registration with the RHS and named this orchid Rhyncholaeliocattleya (Rlc. for short) Leni Robredo. Back then, little did I know the groundswell of support she would gather; and If my little act of naming this orchid has resonated with so many, it is a tribute to how she can inspire people to rise up and move each other to hope for a better future. For it proves how aspirations for good government do produce a spirit of volunteerism. Songs, paintings, murals, poems, memes, videos, and all sorts of creativity propel this people’s movement, where ordinary folk from all classes volunteer their time, effort, and hard-earned money to help elect this woman of substance.
I fear no more. The future looks bright. And rosy pink!