Rafflesia Leonardi

Rafflesia Leonardi is the biggest flower here in the Philippines and third largest flower in the world.  This flower is found in Luzon here in the Philppines.  It is a parasitic plant species that belong to the genus Rufflesia.  Julie Barcelona, a botanist working on Philippine ferns and rafflesia, and her colleagues, named this flower after the Filipino botanist, Dr. Leonardo Co.

Last Saturday, Leonardo Co returned home, after years of hiking the mountains and the woods studying plant life.  But Leonardo came home in a coffin, with his coworkers, friends and family crying for justice.  Leonardo Co and four of his companions were allegedly caught in a crossfire between the Armed Forces of the Philippnes and the New People's Army somewhere in Kananga, Leyte last November 15, 2010.  Co and three others were killed.

Julie Barcelona, a botanist who had named "one of the most beautiful rafflesia " after Co, said that he once told her, "My worth and the things I have done will be appreciated more after I'm dead."  Barcelona recalled Co as saying.

Instead of a featured Lagunian today, I chose to point the spotlight to Leonard Co, a Filipino botanist and taxonomist.

What he said is actually one of one of my purposes why I created this blog.  I want celebrate the lives of those people in our neighborhood, here in Sta. Cruz, Laguna, who work not only to make a living but also to be of service to the community.  And I wanted to do that while I can still talk to the person, and not in circumstances like this where I only have to rely on what is written about him/her and what they do.

While we await the justice for the deaths of people like Leonardo Co, I choose to celebrate the lives of the people in our neighborhood who, in those small deeds that they do, made our lives a little better and easier.  

**Image copied from this website.