A rusting, moldy hard drive was discovered deep inside a neglected cabinet a few years ago. The hard drive is where Leonard Co downloaded his last notes, images, documents, and artifacts. Two of Leonard’s close friends, Imelda Sarmiento and Raymund Villanueva, approached Red Constantino, the managing director of the Constantino Foundation, in February 2025 to ask if he can find a way to restore files stored in the drive. This was a complicated job, but it was accomplished through a modern vacuum-sealed lab. Not all files made it, but most were recovered, and Glenda and Linnaea, wife and daughter of Leonard, were right away informed. Constantino then worked closely with the Institute of Biology to go through the more complex task of sorting and classifying the images.
The objectives were simple, based on how best to honor Leonard, and Glenda and Linnaea both agreed—ensure all files are accessible to the public, the global, not just national, public, for free download, but also to make sure all scientific images are scientifically properly classified and where provenance is uncertain, to mark them as works in progress. Ultimately, the aim was shared with a larger group – to create the Leonard Co Collection, housed in the Philippines, managed by a public institution, a role clearly played by the Institute of Biology, and housed in the UP Data Commons to make sure the everything was available to the public. Like a forest, the same collection would then grow based on public contributions of photos with or about Leonard, including research papers related to or which were inspired by the People’s Botanist. Launched on Nov. 15 – including, or, especially, the reminder that justice continues to elude the family of Leonard, 15 long years after his murder.
For now, the Constantino Foundation is hosting the recovered images temporarily, and it will move to UP Data Commons – as envisioned by its pioneer, the former head of UP’s Institute of Biology and a close friend of Leonard Co, the late Dr. Perry Ong. UP Data Commons was the brainchild of Dr. Ong and he would have wanted the collection named after his esteemed friend—the Leonard Co Collection—to be under UP Data Commons, managed by the UP Institute of Biology.
