Albert Balbutin Jr. | Nov 15, 2024

As we rush to school, work, or in-between, we overlook the greenery around us. It’s all just a blur, plants. We pass by plant life under our feet, over our heads, and around our homes.

Others, like myself, love green spaces. We enjoy time at the park, or a trek up a mountain in the province. Leave it to the Japanese to have a word for forest bathing: shinrin-yoku.

And then there was Leonard Co. Not only did he dive into the forest because it made him happy, he also saw the forest as an ancient pharmacy for people. He was regarded as a “human library” of Philippine plants and trees. A colleague of mine once shared her awe of his ability to identify trees down to the family, genus, or even species name.

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November 15, 2010 – Leonard Co (botanist), Sofronio Cortez (forest guard), and Julius Borromeo (forest guide) were murdered by the army on the roots of a Tanguile tree as they were conducting botanical research for the conservation of the rainforests in Leyte, Philippines. Linnaea Co, named after a twinflower (Linnaea borealis) is the bereaved and sole daughter of slain botanist Leonard Co. She continues to process her grief since the muder of her father when she was just 8-years old.

She homes a tree nursery in honour of her father’s botanical legacy, planting wildlings across reforestation sites where her father used to bring her.

how many more flowers?
how many more years?
how many more in this thirst for justice? Read Original [READ]

Leonard L. Co, unparalleled plant scholar and a scientist for the people, died last November 15, 2010 in Leyte from gunshot wounds obtained during an alleged crossfire between the Philippine Army 19th Infantry Battalion and the New People’s Army. Co had pioneered the writing of manuals on Philippine medicinal plants for community-based health care in the 1970s and worked as a pharmacologist of Chinese medicinal plants in the 1980s. At the time of his death, Co was doing research on native forest species for reforestation. He was also assembling a digital herbarium and writing an update of The Enumeration of Philippine Flowering Plants written by Elmer Merrill at the turn of the 20th century.

Leonard was born in 1953 to a Chinese father and Ilocano mother, and lived in Caloocan where the family [READ]