Plant Blindness

Filipno's have long suffered from plant blindness.And sadly, it has caused us billions and billions of dollars - yes, dollars, not pesos. We simply do not put much importance to the rich biodiversity in our country.

Here's proof:
1.Ilang-ilang has been used by old women to give rooms a fragrant smell even before potpourri was known to the world. The French came and they noticed the potential of the flower and took with a couple of ilang-ilang seeds. They came to Africa and bought a huge piece of land where they grew ilang-ilang trees. They extracted the oil from the orchid which is now the base oil for all YSL perfumes.

2.Everyone loves nata de coco.When the Spanish came, Filipinos, being very hospitable, served them nata de coco.The Spaniards loved the taste of it and asked the Filipinos for samples to take back home. Malaysia and Indonesia soon found out about it and even took classes just to learn how to make nata de coco. Filipinos have known how to make nata de coco long before but noone had patented it. When Sony decided to engage in miniturization they were forced to look for an alternative to steel (because steel, becomes more fragile as it becomes smaller) They noticed that nata de coco was made of fiber woven together (notice how when you eat nata de coco, its extremely hard to break it in 2, chewing only flattens the fibers but does not break it)
Now, Sony takes the fibers of nata de coco, coats it to keep moisture out and uses it in their new inventions. Nata de coco fibers are also being tested for use as surgical thread. The beauty of the fibers when used in surgery is that once the wound has healed, since nata de coco is biodegradable, it degrades itself.

3.There is a beautiful flower found in Mt. Makiling, Medinilla magnifica, or the kapa-kapa. this flower is unique to the Philippines. There is a botanical garden in Mt. Makiling that shows the kapa-kapa to people who visit the garden. Sad to say, people who visit pay no attention to this flower. Some people from the Netherlands came and were amazed by this flower. They took a some samples home. Since their climate is different from ours, they set up a wholoe nursery just so they could plant the kapa-kapa in their country. After being successful in growing the kapa-kapa, they came back to the Philippines bringing their version of the flower. They are now selling this to Filipinos at the price of P500 each. Filipinos are buy these flowers when they find out that they came from the Netherlands. Little do they know that they are being cheated into buying a flower that originally came from the Philippines.

If we paid more attention to what we have around us and stopped destroying our resources, the Philippines might be able to save itself from the economic crisis we are now facing. If we are one of the richest countries in terms of biodiversity. And if ranked according to land mass, we could have very well placed first. The Philippines is only 2/1000 of the earth's land mass. But 5% of the plant species can be found here. Our plants are not only given national heritage, they are given global patronage.

*****

it pays to listen in botany class.you never know what you'll find out.just sharing what our teacher told us this morning.

TRIVIA: There are about species of orchids in our country. And out of the 800, 700-750 species can only be found in the Philippines. Only about 50-100 species of orchids can be found worldwide.