Paphiopedilum Jogjae
A while ago I was fortunate to acquire a few more issues of the Orchid Digest publication. On the front page of one of these books, there is a picture of Paphiopedilum Jogjae. It has several flowers on the stem, the tall yellow dorsal has brown stripes, the petals are twisted and hairy, green with brown spots and stripes and the pouch is rosy pink. It looks like a much improved Paph. chamberlainianum. From the information printed for this photograph, I learned a few interesting things. And just to be able to tell you about this plant, I did more research. Here is what I found:
 Paphiopedilum Jogjae |
As you probably know, the Netherlands had colonized the East Indies way back in the 17th century and had settled throughout Indonesia and Western New Guinea (now Irian Jaya). Many natives from that region also held Dutch passports and received their higher education in the Netherlands. After WWII was over and the Japanese troops had returned home, the Dutch Queen promised to grant Indonesia and Dutch New Guinea their independence by the year 1949. But there were many impatient people who would not wait that long and with support from the U.S., Mr. Sukarno ousted everyone who held a Dutch passport, around 1947. The Netherlands had to accommodate a lot of people in a hurry. The sad thing was that these ousted people had to leave EVERYTHING behind and according to my source, they also never received any compensation.
Now let us go back to Jogjakarta around the 1900s. There are so many beautiful plants growing in delightful surroundings. Of course, there are also lots of orchids. We know that the collecting, growing and hybridizing of orchids was rather fashionable, even then. How much simpler it must be to grow tropical species right in your garden! Not only species but hybrids as well would thrive under such congenial conditions. Many primary hybrids were registered during those years – I am certain that some of them were made right in their native lands. For example, a cross between Paph. glaucophyllum from Java and Paph. praestans from New Guinea was registered by W. van de Venter as Paph. Jogjae; it commemorates the lovely city of Jogjakarta in Java. What do you think happened to all these ‘captive’ plants after their owners were made to leave? Their houses were either burned or left to decay; the gardens neglected and all those treasured plants, the orchids and the newly created hybrids were left to live on their own. It seems they did this very well because more than 40 years later, plant hunters from the West found these ‘wild’ growing orchids. The collectors were not aware that one particular hybrid growing wild had already been registered with the R.H.S in 1927. Thus Paph. Jogjae was newly introduced to orchid growers as… Paph. yapianum! It took a while before better informed orchidists realized what had happened there. I wonder how many other plants come into our collections with ‘new’ names.
When one remembers how many explorers, traders, missionaries, officials and just plain travellers had been to and lived in these far-away places, it is tempting to speculate: what plants had these people grown? There must also be natives who enjoyed having orchids in their gardens. Were any of them successful, like Mr. van de Venter, in raising new hybrids? Who knows?
Ingrid Schmidt-Ostrander - Canadian Orchid Congress