In Memoriam: Leonard Co (1953-2010)

In Memoriam: Leonard Co (1953-2010)
November 17, 2010 //
11
I am told that the interview will be at the office of taxonomist Leonard Co, which also happens to be the herbarium of the UP Institute of Biology. This information thrills me. A close second to my favorite fantasy of being the caretaker of the archives of great writers has always been as caretaker of a very important collection of Philippine plant specimens. Soon, there will be no such thing as the extinction of the Philippines’ primary forests. (It’s a fantasy.) Of course, having absolutely no education nor training nor experience whatsoever in the latter, I’d be lucky to be offered a job at the herbarium canteen, to which I will say yes wholeheartedly.

To me, herbarium specimens and botanical prints are some of the most beautiful things on earth and, out of my geeky love for them, wrote a poem about taxonomy entitled “Naming”. Given the chance, I can and will spend hours looking at Father Manuel Blanco’s Flora de Filipinas and Trinidad Pardo de Tavera’s Plantas Medicinales de Filipinas. The taxonomic enterprise means the pursuit of order and classification by the act of naming of the vast and riotous natural world, where species by their sheer volume can become extinct even before their “discovery”. The quiet devotion and scrupulous study it demands belies the sheer audacity of the work. I look forward to meeting Leonard Co.

I didn’t know that UP had an herbarium, was so excited that I showed up an hour earlier than scheduled and sat on the steps of Bio Pav where it was located, anxiously testing my tape and mp3 recorder and practically memorizing Leonard Co’s CV. Come the hour and I head straight to his office, eager to see neat stacks of specimen sheets—preserved Philippine plant specimens, browning, brittle, but carefully mounted on stiff white cardboard with their meticulously written specimen labels—then the species folders under the genus folders, and, finally, the herbarium cabinets. I knock, the door opens.

My heart sinks. The room looks more like the storage area for a newspaper drive. Surely this can’t be the herbarium. On top of a big table, Leonard Co’s work area, rises a great mound of old newspapers folded in half, and plant parts spill out of their makeshift folders.

“Hi,” somebody greets me. I turn and find my subject Leonard Co, in his white T-shirt and cargo pants, offering me his hand and a warm grin that still fails to hide his unease at this interview. I smile amiably back, shake his hand then, counting on the fact that I am a UP graduate back in UP with a UP professor, I go straight from impersonal to impertinent. “Sir, ito ang herbarium natin?” He relaxes, sits down, and gives a loud curse. “Oo! Ganyan kung paano natin pahalagahan ang science at botany dito [sa Pilipinas]!”

Over the course of our interview, Leonard rages against the lack of funding and support for science from the government, the non-scientific and halfhearted “green” projects of corporations that can potentially do more harm than good, and the restrictions being put on botanists doing conservation work because they are being accused of bio-prospecting and bio-piracy among others. I am disabused of all my romantic notions of plant systematics. In their place however is a growing admiration for a brilliant man who seems willing and up to the mammoth task of biodiversity conservation in the country.

We then proceed to talk about Rafflesia, a species of parasitic plant that I have to write about, and the fact that one species, Rafflesia leonardi, has been named after him by Dr. Julie Barcelona as a tribute to the taxonomist who is well known for his work on Philippine medicinal plants and is considered by many scientists as the best botanist in the country. He practically leaps from his chair, eager to show me the plaster of Paris model of Rafflesia leonardi that just arrived from the National Museum that morning. Two of his former students, one an apprentice, are present throughout the interview, and they seem to grow impatient with my questions. “Ask him about his first collection,” one suggests eagerly. A mammalogist who worked with him in the mountains and the rainforests of Northern Luzon shares how Leonard slipped and fell during a climb. He had his camera and laptop on him, but the first thing Leonard said was, “Ang mga specimens!” Dr. Barcelona, in a separate interview, tells of how she had to promise to take him to a population of Rafflesia in her province just to get him to attend her wedding.

Leonard admits, “Anything that’s not related to botany, sa akin distraction yan eh.” This singularity and sense of vocation is important. “The biological richness is so bewildering. We have limited resources, eh, ang lawak nito, saan ba natin i-invest?… Kailangan pa natin ng mga tao. Versus the volume of the work, ang conservation parang catch-up ka lagi. Before 2012 strikes! Repent! For the end is near!” He laughs heartily.

Last Monday, November 15, 2010, Leonard Co and his two companions, forest guard Sofronio G. Cortez, and Julius Borromeo, a member of the Tongonan Farmers Association, were caught in a crossfire between the military and members of the New People’s Army. They were gathering specimen seedlings of endangered native trees and were killed. Together with everyone involved in our book, I weep over this tragic loss. I reread the transcript of our interview and look at our interview tapes. I write this post in the present tense.

I dread the thought of going back to the manuscript, to his chapter, to revise it. And the dread is not just about getting the tenses right, although the pathos of it debilitates me right now, but writing it again knowing that an absence—definite, final, relentless—seals each revision. The interview took place a year ago, November 11, 2009. I am publishing here excerpts of our conversation as if an invocation.

On his childhood: Bata pa lang ako, mahilig na talaga ako sa pagkolekta ng anu-ano. Pero mas nauna ako na-interes sa mga shells, sa beetles. Natatandaan ko nun sa National Bookstore merong Golden Nature’s Guide. So, meron akong moth. Ikumpara ko sya. Oops, may konting resemblance. Elementary ako nito. Tapos kung meron pang nagtambak ng graba dun sa malapit sa amin, pupunta rin ako kasi meron din akong Rocks and Minerals. O, heto ay hornblend. Pero of course mali yung I.D. That’s the first attempt, the visual comparison. A natural curiosity. Natural talaga na gusto kong nagsi-systematize, nagka-classify ng mga bagay-bagay. Yung iba, hindi ko ma-kolekta, tulad ng constellations. And then in high school, I had one teacher sa biology sa Philippine Chinese High School, and this guy eventually became the world-renowned moss taxonomist Benito Tan. Siya pa yung dorm master. Every weekend aalis yun, akyatan kami ng bundok, kasama ako. Binigyan ako ni Benny ng kopya [ng Flora of Manila]. I think birthday gift. Dun ako nag-aral ng botanical terminology, and of course, bago ko ibigay yung specimen kay Mr. Hermes Gutierrez, i-try ko muna identify. Halimbawa bigay ko weekend, next week babalikan ko. Tapos makikita ko karamihan sa mga ina-identify ko mali. Minsan tumatama.

On his UP days: Ang tatay ko against sa idea ng botany. Ayaw niya. “You study botany—what for? Di ka yayaman diyan.” He wanted me to become an engineer. Eh, mahilig naman ako sa chemistry, so why not Chem Eng? Mahina ako sa Math. O, Chem na lang. First sem ko dito, bumagsak ako sa Math 17. Sabi nung adviser ko, “Naku Mr. Co, I think you better shift to another course. I don’t think you will survive.” “Oo nga ho, eh.” Mahina talaga ako sa Math. So nag-transfer na lang ako, botany naman talaga gusto ko eh. Di pa quota course yan kasi may pre-med pa nun eh. Madali ako nakapasok. Nalaman na lang ng tatay ko after two sems. So yun. Iba ang aral. Kasi ang gusto ko nasa labas. Last year lang ako nag-graduate. Yung time namin, those were turbulent times. Political activism. Nag-aaral, nag-e-exam mga ka-klase ko, nagmi-meeting kami. Pero kasi kahit namundok kami, we still had botany in the boondocks. Isa sa mga task ko dati sa health work ang traditional medicine. Kaya isa sa mga libro ko nga Medicinal Plants of the Cordillera. Alam mo one time na-destino ako sa Davao, sa isang guerrilla zone. Nakita ko dun ang libro namin. Tinranslate sa Bisaya. Yung trabaho namin nun, we translate acupuncture textbooks, medicinal plant manuals na ginagamit ng barefoot doctors because at that time, tinatanong namin: Science for whom? Science for the people.

On indigenous culture and botany: Marami tayong indigenous knowledge systems na deeply intertwined sa surroundings natin. And in fact, tanggalin mo ang plant lore sa isang kultura, yung traditional na kultura, mawawalan ng identity yang mga yan: mga alamat nila, mga sayaw nila. Sa Palawan nga nakakita ako ng mga ganyan eh. Mga ritwal nila sa pagkuha ng pukyutan, mga ritwal sa paggawa ng arrow poison. Ang conception nila ng disease causation, ang diagnosis nila, magkaiba yan sa bio-medicine…. Although hindi natin natututukan, sinasabi natin, nanganganib ang kanilang mga kultura, we are discussing this in general terms. Kasama ng pagkaubos ng biodiversity natin ay pagkaubos din ng traditional knowledge system.

On education and building awareness for conservation: The starting point is natural history appreciation. Hindi mo mamahalin ang isang bagay na hindi mo naiiintindihan. Mas lumalalim ang pagintindi mo, mas lumalalim ang concern mo.

On taxonomy: Taxonomy is not a haphazard remembering of names. We learn not through memorizing. You don’t memorize them. These are relational knowledge. Kagaya nito, walang pangalan, anong pamilya nito, ano ang mga katangian na nandito. Relational knowledge, parang, si Juan de la Cruz ay nakatira sa ganitong household, na belonging to this barangay, and so on. Sa lahat ng branches ng biology, taxonomy ang discipline with a sense of history. Ang systematics walang current literature diyan. Ang current literature namin dates back to 1753. Yung kay Linneaus. Eto rin ang pinaka-encyclopedic ang breadth. Yung volume ng alam mo kailangan malaki. Wala kaming concept of current literature. So, walang nalulumang literatura sa amin.

On his personal projects: These are personal projects that I need because malayo tayo sa botanical center so that any student of botany interested in the article, dowload mo na. … Why penalize researchers [by having them download per page] when you can download it as an entire pdf? So yung mga old documents, kinukuha ko na. Pati yung sa neighboring countries. The other one is a digital herbarium, arranged sila by famiy, and these are the specimens na pinagbatayan ng original descriptions. At open ang distribution nitong databases. Ginagawa ko din yung kay Merrill kasi yung last checklist natin nung 1923 pa. Heto yung literature citations, collection numbers. Gusto kong ilabas as hard print and afterwards as database on the Internet. This work is lifetime.

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