“If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”

This old riddle, according to Ronald Achacoso, head of the Philippine Native Plants Conservation Society, has become a fitting frame for a loss that still reverberates through Philippine science.

Fifteen years after botanist Leonard Co was killed by government troops while conducting fieldwork in Leyte, the question lands with a sharper weight.

His death—described by authorities as a case of soldiers mistaking him and his two companions for rebels—was followed by years of quiet and slow-moving justice, the kind of silence that dissipates the way an echo disappears into the canopy.

Leonard, forest guard Sofronio Cortez, and guide Julius Borromeo may have seemed to have died in vain. But a decade and a half later, their death in the forest may yet save us from an avoidable death before floods completely overrun our mountains and forests and drown us in our homes.

Now, the recovery of an old hard drive thought lost to rust and mold has brought back a voice once unheard. In its restored contents, the forest seems to be speaking again.

Inside the hard drive are thousands of images and meticulous notes. These are fragments of Leonard’s final years in the field, traces of the mind of a man who spent his life listening to the language of trees.

Inside the corroded drive

THE digital trove, now being curated by the Institute of Biology (IB) at the University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman in partnership with the Constantino Foundation and Green Convergence, contains Leonard’s field photographs taken shortly before his death.

In July, the Foundation reached out to the Institute to assess whether the deteriorating drive was still recoverable. “We said that since those were Sir Leonard’s files, we were certain they had value,” IB professor Lilian Rodriguez told BusinessMirror in Filipino.

When biologist Migs de las Llagas, who curates the collection, first opened the drive, its contents were in disarray. “Disorganized in the sense that sometimes I’d find large folders with big file sizes, but when I opened them, everything inside was corrupted,” he told this newspaper in a mix of English and Filipino.

Yet, from there, they retrieved about 1,300 plant photos, at least half in usable condition.

“So far, it’s been easy to organize them and extract the metadata,” he said. “Even those we cannot visually see because they’re corrupted, we have data on when they were taken and what the file names were. We have evidence that these photos existed.”

The recovered files will be organized under the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group (APG-4) system, a taxonomy framework based on evolutionary relationships.

They will serve as the core of a digital repository to be made publicly accessible, which is a gesture consistent with the late botanist’s lifelong belief in open science.

Beyond the flora

THE botanist’s journey in the forest also revealed traces of life beyond scientific documentation.

As expected, most files were work photos, close-ups of plants he recorded in the field, per de las Llagas. “But there’s also a sizable portion of the drive that contains his personal pictures,” he added.

Those personal photos showed quiet glimpses of his days outdoors. Included are snapshots of spiders, fungi and sunsets, images taken for no reason other than curiosity.

“He was an all-around lover of the forest,” the young researcher said. “Wherever he went, he always had a subfolder for non-flora.”

A scientist’s worth: Nemenzo steps in

WHO would have thought, though, that despite being regarded as the country’s foremost plant taxonomist, Leonard nearly went through life without a degree?

Eventually, the state university conferred him a Bachelor of Science in Biology in 2008, more than three decades after he first enrolled.

It was an extraordinary case, one that Fidel Nemenzo, then head of the Science and Society Program of the UP College of Science and later UP Diliman chancellor, personally defended before the institution, together with the late Perry Ong, then IB director.

“A lot of scholars who had fancy degrees, doctorates, both local and foreign, saw Leonard as one of the foremost authorities on Philippine plants,” Nemenzo told BusinessMirror.

He added in Filipino, “What we were arguing was, what’s the point of our degrees if someone like Leonard doesn’t have one?”

In an email he wrote to the College of Science Executive Board, Nemenzo argued: “Rules are important, of course, but they are not the end-all and be-all. I think there is enough ambiguity in Leonard’s case to allow the creative sidestepping of certain technicalities.”

“I think we lose sight of the real mission of UP if we do not see beyond rules,” he added. “Too much bureaucratization in the university will kill scholarship.”

Leonard received his diploma that year, officially joining the ranks of graduates he had long outpaced in expertise.

The living archive

AND through the data he left behind, Co continues to expand the boundaries of Philippine botany.

Several plants and animals have been named in his honor: Rafflesia leonardi, Medinilla daliana, Diplycosia coi, Nepenthes leonardoi, Pinanga leonardcoi, and even Soricomys leonardcoi, a species of forest rat.

“We want to ensure our past is usable,” Red Constantino of the Constantino Foundation said in an exclusive Viber message. “That members of the scientific community belong to the pantheon of heroes in our nation.”

Meanwhile, for Achacoso, who is also Leonard’s close friend and colleague, there is a plan to improve his memorial marker in UP. “I want this place to be a source of contemplation,” he told this newspaper. “To recharge, to orient yourself—to ask, what would Leonard do?”

November 15 this year marked the 15th anniversary of Leonard’s death, commemorated at the Dita Tree, also known as the Scholar’s Tree, in UP Diliman, where a third of his ashes were scattered.

Image credits: Bernard Testa, BERNARD TESTA