Environment, Headlines, Latin America & the Caribbean

COLOMBIA: Traditional and Biotech Efforts to Save National Flower

Yadira Ferrer* - Tierramérica

BOGOTA, May 15 2004 (IPS) - In a space of 250 square metres in the garden of his home in the city of Medellín, Carlos Sánchez, a retired industrial engineer, enjoys the daily pleasure of seeing several hundred cattleya trianae orchids grow.

It is Colombia’s national flower and is threatened with extinction as a result of environmental degradation and urbanisation. But using both traditional and modern techniques, experts are fighting to keep this emblematic flower from disappearing.

Sánchez, a member of the Colombian Orchid Society, has in his garden some 5,000 orchid plants, mostly the cattleya trianae, which he has been able to reproduce and preserve using the "comparción", or dividing, technique that he learned from his grandparents as a child in the countryside.

"For the reproduction one takes an adult plant and divides it into several pieces, ensuring that each part has a minimum of four or five leaves, and then lets them take root," he explained to Tierramérica.

Sánchez maintains that his "homemade" technique allows the plant to flower within four years, while the in vitro technique used by experts in the laboratory entails a seven-year wait.

The cattleya trianae is on its way to extinction because its habitat has been destroyed, but "a great number of institutions and individuals are working to prevent the species from disappearing."

Among those institutions is the Colombian Orchid Society, based in the northwestern Colombian city of Medellín and founded 40 years ago. Its 180 members promote the study, cultivation, conservation and crossbreeding of orchids, and they pressure the government to take action to preserve and recuperate the ecosystems in which this species grows.

The orchid foundation of Tolima, a department of central Colombia, maintains an "orchidary" where visitors can appreciate 150 species that are extinct in nature, as well as other orchids that are endangered, including the national flower.

The foundation is a non-governmental organisation created 12 years ago, and among its objectives is environmental education and raising awareness of the visitors it receives daily.

In the Colombian capital, the recovery effort for the cattleya trianae is led by the Bogotá Botanical Garden, where the largest-scale in vitro reproduction of the orchid takes place.

The process is initiated by biologists, who seek out seeds or germinated plants that possess the necessary traits for laboratory reproduction. There, in a long process, the natural conditions of germination are replicated to obtain the desired basic material.

According to Botanical Garden experts, the institution has enough material to produce thousands of plants, but is so far opting to maintain them in semi-natural spaces where their survival can be guaranteed.

The flower takes its name from English botanist William Cattley (1788-1835) and forms part of the orquidea family found in the tropics of the Americas.

The cattleya trianae, endemic to Colombia, is an epiphyte, meaning it does not require soil, and is found in the central departments of Tolima, Huila and Cundinamarca. Its flowers range across 15 colours, from white to red.

The orchids traditionally have been found in areas ranging from the seashore to the mountains, but the best zone to find them is from 1,800 to 2,500 metres above sea level.

Biologist Manuela Herrera, of the state-run Universidad del Atlántico, told Tierramérica that the cattleya trianae is one of the 3,000 orchid species found in Colombia, which represent approximately 10 percent of these flower species worldwide.

Plants are the leading natural wealth of Colombia, with 45 to 55 thousand species of flora, of which a third are found only in this country, she said.

This great biodiversity is very vulnerable to the destructive actions of humans in their habitat, and some 10,000 plant species are threatened – a situation that is particularly grave for orchids, stressed the expert.

"At the end of the 19th century, ships carrying cattleyas travelled from the Americas to Europe, destined for nobility, and only five percent of the shipments reached their destination," said Herrera.

(*Yadira Ferrer is a Tierramérica contributor. Originally published May 8 by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme and the United Nations Environment Programme.)