NEWS & EVENT
Latest News from Coelogyne Marthae Expedition
Martha Tilaar’s name has been memorialized onto an orchid species. It called Coelogyne marthae. Become one of rare orchid species, Coelogyne marthae found by Soraya Sierra from National Herbarium Netherland, an association under Leiden University, through an expedition in Borneo. Although it’s an endemic plant from Indonesia, but the plant is getting difficult to find. Therefore this orchid listed into rare orchid classification by the orchid preservation team of Bogor Botanical Garden.
Said by Tutik Siregar from Bogor Botanical, their exploration to search this orchid has not bring new result yet. “Since 2013, our exploration team has not found this species from any forest yet. At the first time, Bogor Botanical Garden has 4 pots of parent plants of Coelogyne marthae, but not only one left. That’s because the difficulty of the breeding process,†she said.
Added by another team from Bogor Botanical Garden, Yuniar, for the breeding process, Coelogyne marthae can’t directly tacked on its stem, that process will fail. Cross breeding with another parent plant is needed for Coelogyne marthae to reproduce. Knowing that journey, Martha Tilaar hope to take more action in marthae orchid preservation. As well as Martha Tilaar, Bogor Botanical Garden also hope that Indonesian people will help orchid preservation by taking care of forest as its habitat and self-help breeding.