Papilionanthe Miss Joaquim
hybrid orchid
Papilionanthe Miss Joaquim, also known as the Singapore orchid, the Princess Aloha orchid, and commonly known by its original name Vanda Miss Joaquim, is a hybrid orchid (a grex) that is the national flower of Singapore. For its resilience and year-round blooming quality, it was chosen on 15 April 1981 to represent Singapore's uniqueness and hybrid culture. This orchid is the first registered plant hybrid from Singapore.
History
In the June 1893 Gardeners' Chronicle, then scientific director of the Singapore Botanic Garden Henry Nicholas Ridley announced that a few years prior, Ashkhen Hovakimian (Agnes Joaquim), "...a lady residing in Singapore, well known for her success as a horticulturist, succeeded in crossing Vanda hookeriana Rchb. f., and V. teres, two plants cultivated in almost every garden in Singapore." A decorated horticulturalist from a family with a strong interest in plants, Joaquim won about 70 awards "...for cultivating varied specimens such as radishes, custard apples, dahlias and begonias in Singapore between 1881 and 1899," and Vanda Miss Joaquim would win first prize for the rarest orchid in a reportedly crowded field at Singapore's 1899 Flower Show. Miss Agnes Joaquim did not exhibit VMJ until long after it came into being and the award was for the rarest (only rarest, nothing else) orchid. The great majority of orchid scientists and experts do not accept the theory strongly favored by a someone who is not an orchid expert that Miss Agnes Joaquim intentionally made the cross which produced VMJ. The orchid experts accept a report by Miss Joaquim's nephew that she found the plant in a clump of bamboo. This nephew was present when in happened (for a detailed accound see Arditti and Hew, 2007 which contains full details an many citations.
Joaquim was likely encouraged to take the orchid to Ridley by her younger brother Joseph P. Joaquim, "a prominent lawyer, horticulturist and member of the Botanic Gardens Committee", and she or possibly her brother showed the plant to Ridley in early 1893. A specimen sheet from the Gardens recording the artificial hybrid is dated April 1893.
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This entry incorporates text from “Papilionanthe Miss Joaquim” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.