Leonard, the ‘plant philanderer,’ lies among his treasures

Monday, 22 November 2010 20:44
Jeanmaire E. Molina, PhD
Business Mirror

I FIRST met Sir Leonard almost 10 years ago through Chico, who was my plant taxonomy instructor. Sir Leonard, who was then botanist for Conservation International-Philippines, was recruiting volunteers to help with field work out in the remote jungles of Palanan, Isabela, which entailed a 10-hour bus ride from Manila to Cauayan, and then a 30-minute Cessna ride over the Northern Sierra Madres.

My mom was worried about the trip so we decided to ask him what it was really like being out there, especially the malaria situation. Sir Leonard replied matter-of-factly, “Ah, wag po kyo mag-alala. Lahat naman po ng field biologists may malaria [Don’t worry, all field biologists have malaria].” Hearing this, we immediately drove to Mercury Drug so that I can start my dose of Aralen, a malaria prophylactic.

This was Sir Leonard. So dedicated was he, that malaria did not deter him. He took pride in having two strains of it in his system. Nothing stopped him—a throng of wasps, a turbulent ride on the six-seater Cessna a.k.a. the flying coffin, Signal No. 5 typhoons, even a shotgun to his face by an NPA rebel. Just to give you a sense of how intense this person was: One time he slipped while wading in the Palanan stream, hit his back so bad, but instead of squealing in pain, he shouted, “Yung Eugenia ko. May flowers ’yon!”, to alert us to save his collected plant from drifting away with the stream currents. When he had it back in his hand, only then he did he shout, “aray!”

As a young boy, Sir Leonard already knew what he wanted to do with his life. A natural historian at heart, he was collecting anything he could, from stones, bugs to plants. At 12 he had transformed part of his room into a makeshift herbarium to house one of his first plant collections, Oryza sativa, better known to nonbotanists as rice.

He was always fascinated by the diversity of life, and he knew plants were the scaffold that held it all together. He studied botany in college because he knew this was the only way he could get out into the woods, even joining the UP mountaineering club just so he could collect and add to his growing collection of dried plants. The mentorship of Benito Tan and Jose Vera Santos, two botany greats, only whetted his appetite even more—15,000 Philippine plant species and his dream was to know and catalogue every single one of it, and to make the world know of the Philippines’ incredible biodiversity before it was too late.

Sir Leonard’s energy and incredible, beyond-words type of love for botany and Philippine conservation were so strong that it just radiated out to anyone he met; and I can definitely speak for this, as well as my good friends, Sandra Yap, Hazel Consunji, Lorie Tongco, Ulysses Ferreras, and the dozens of other students he had touched one way or another. He was like a second father to us. He was “Tatay Chex” for Chekwa, our fond nickname for someone we adored. He was my dad in science, but I loved him like my own. He molded me into the person that I am now. He taught me everything I know about Philippine plants, which he knew like the palm of his hand. He was relentless in encouraging his students to pursue botany and conservation science, so that we can all fight for the cause of preserving every bit of Philippine biodiversity.

One thing that I will surely miss about him was his intimate knowledge of any Philippine plant species. There is no leaf or twig that you can show him that he won’t be able to give you the Latin name of, the shape of the scales or the hair type of its domatia, down to the pages of the Philippine Journal of Science where it was first published. If you ask him, “Sir, pano nyo po nalaman [How did you know that]?” He’d jokingly say, “Ah, binulong saken ni Merrill [Merrill whispered it to me].” Merrill was literally Sir’s American idol. He was an American botanist who devoted much of his life to the study of Philippine plants in the early 1900s.

His portrait hangs in the herbarium, where Sir Leonard would sleep most of the time. This was Sir’s second home, after the forests. No offense Tita Glenda (Leonard’s wife), but Sir was a plant philanderer! One time I asked him, “Sir, alin po mas mahal nyo, si Tita Glends o ang halaman [Sir, who do you love more, Tita Glenda or your plants]”. He scratched his head, paused for a while, and said, “Ang hirap naman ng tanong mo [That’s a tough question].” So much was his love for his science that he also named his only daughter after Linneaus, the great Swedish botanist of the 1700s!

There is no other Filipino botanist who comes close to Sir Leonard. He was the best of the best. Bar-none. Passionate is even an understatement to describe him. He was a self-made man; everything he knew he pretty much learned by himself, better than any PhD I’ve ever known. His passing is not just a big loss to his loved ones, but more so, a catastrophic loss to this country. Whoever is culpable for this has done our nation a great disservice because I’ve never known anyone who knew our plants the way he did, who had so selflessly given up anything for the cause of Philippine conservation, without any regard at all for personal gain or self-prestige. He is indeed a national treasure, an unsung hero.

It is ironic that he died while collecting forest seeds for reforestation projects. Maybe somehow he knew that some of the seeds he had planted and nurtured 10 years ago are now ready to carry on his mission.

I am one of those seeds and so are Sandra, Uly, Hazel, Lorie. Maybe it is time for us to plant our own seeds and train new students and enthuse others the way Sir Leonard did. May his death, instead of crippling the conservation movement, mobilize each one of us to continue fighting for our forests. This is the only way we can vindicate his death. This is the only way he would want to be remembered. We owe it to him, to ourselves and to this country. And as we leave here, may we all espouse the mantra he lived by, from the great Harvard sociobiologist, E.O. Wilson…

“Every scrap of biological diversity is priceless, to be learned and cherished and never to be surrendered without a struggle.”

Goodbye, Sir Leonard. I will really miss you. Thank you so, so much for giving me the invaluable opportunity to learn from you. We love you.  Nothing will ever be the same again.

Molina, now attached to New York University, was one of Leonardo Co’s research assistants when he first set up the biodiversity project in Palanan, Isabela, in 2001. She and several other UP biology grads who saw his work up close in the forests have been coming back each year during breaks in postgraduate work abroad, to follow up on their projects. This was one of the eulogies for the late, preeminent botanist, whose death by what the military called a “crossfire” in Leyte last week has sparked outrage. His ashes were scattered in Palanan.