VANDA MISS JOACHIM by Brian Milligan
Many countries have chosen an orchid as their national flower. Guatemala chose Lycaste skinneri (variety virginalis, the white form), Costa Rica has Cattleya skinneri and Brazil selected Laelia purpurata. Invariably it seems that a species orchid, native to the country concerned, is chosen. But in 1981 Singapore decided upon an orchid hybrid as its national flower, the first nation to do so. That orchid was Vanda Miss Joachim 'Agnes'. Incidentally, Joachim is pronounced Wah-Kim, the orchid being named after an Armenian lady who found a single plant of it growing in a bamboo clump in her father's garden in Singapore in 1893.
Agnes Joachim was a keen gardener, who immediately recognised that the flowers growing in the bamboo clump were different from those of V. hookerana and V. teres, which also grew in the garden. She took it to Henry Ridley, then Director of the Singapore Botanic Gardens, who confirmed its parentage as a natural hybrid of the above two species. Vanda hookerana is common throughout Malaysia, where it grows in swamps, sometimes with its roots immersed in water. It is so common in the Kinta Valley that its common name is Kinta weed. Vanda teres grows on tall trees over a wide area extending from the Himalayas into Burma and Thailand.
Vanda Miss Joachim is a terete-leafed vanda that must be grown fully exposed to the tropical sun to flourish and flower to its best potential. It is grown commercially in rubble-filled trenches and tied to tall posts. Having a swamp plant as one of its parents, it needs frequent watering - three times daily for best results. Each inflorescence bears about a dozen blooms which open sequentially, about four being open and in good condition at anyone time. The large pink flowers are produced continually throughout the year.
The inaugural issue of the Malayan Orchid Review in 1931 summarised its virtues as follows "The Singapore-raised hybrid, Vanda Miss Joachim, is probably for us the best orchid in the world. What orchid can equal it for size, beauty of shape, beauty of colour, freedom of propagation and floribundity, taken all together? Where can one see anywhere in the world, solid banks and hedges of beautiful flowers to compare with this orchid in the gardens of Singapore?" In Hawaii, actually. The orchid can be propagated rapidly from cuttings, because new roots emerge from each leaf node along the canes. William Bryan visited Singapore in 1920 and took 28 cuttings back with him to Hawaii. Within ten years he had over 10,000 plants and began to sell blooms at 35 cents each. But the orchid grew so prolifically that within a few years every Hawaiian garden contained Vanda Miss Joachim, and the local market evaporated. However, the development of the airline industry following World War II meant that the flowers could be marketed in mainland USA; 720,000 corsages were once sent there in a single specially chartered aeroplane!
The Japanese invasion of Singapore during World War II meant that most orchids were destroyed to provide land to grow basic food supplies. Fortunately the Japanese authorities allowed the English botanist, Eric Holttum, then Curator of the Singapore Botanic Gardens, to continue in that role, and so Vanda Miss Joachim was not lost. After the war, its cultivation was resumed on a large scale, the flowers being flown mainly to Europe, until by 1960 there were signs of a glut. By then many other hybrids were being developed to take its place.
But Vanda Miss Joachim 'Agnes' had fulfilled its role in the development of the vast horticultural export industries of Singapore and neighbouring countries and it is appropriate that Singapore should have recognised the important pioneering role of Miss Joachim's vanda.
Source: A Joy Forever: Vanda Miss Joachim, Singapore's National Flower by Teoh Eng Soon (Times Books Intern., 1982)
