Vanda Miss Joaquim
Encyclopedia
Singapore
Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...
's national flower.
The flower is named after Agnes Joaquim who found the orchid in a clump of bamboo. An amateur historian has suggested that Miss Agnes Joaquim actually bred the orchid which bears her name. This suggestion is accepted only by a few hobby orchid growers. It was not, and is not accepted by orchid scientists because the available evidence does not support the intentional hybrid idea. The evidence suggests that Vanda Miss Joaquim is a natural hybrid between the Burmese Vanda teres and the Malayan Vanda hookeriana. It is not known which of the two species produced the seeds and which one provided the pollen. When hybrids are made intentionally these facts are known. They are not known for natural hybrids. The hybrid was shown to Henry Ridley, the director of the Singapore Botanic Gardens. Ridley examined it, had it sketched and sent a description to the Gardeners' Chronicle writing that: ‘A few years ago Miss 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.’ (Gardeners' Chronicle 24 June 1893, p. 740).