Among commercial growers, this wildflower, known locally as waling-waling, is best described as the ‘queen of cutflowers.’ Appropriately, it is the ‘queen of the jungle.’
Scientifically, it is known as the Vanda sanderiana, a member of the orchid family and named after Henry Frederick Conrad Sander, a British orchidologist. It was actually German botanist Heinrich Gustav Reichenbach who it Vanda sanderiana.
Endemic to Davao and adjacent regions, the flower is worshipped as a god by the early Bagobos, even calling it diwata. But beyond science and ethnology, the waling-waling has taken its immortal place in arts and poetry, at times the substance of a lover’s gift to an inamorata.
A painter, expressing his emotions on canvas, once called the Davao orchid as the ‘fairest of the rare’ and the ‘one choice for the fair.’
In the 1938 records of the Bureau of Forestry, a total of 2,149 waling-waling plants were exported from Davao and 790 from the province of Cotabato, with exorbitant prices ranging from PhP5.00 to PhP200, the equivalent of US$100, or roughly US$1,030 in today’s exchange rate.
An observer noted that in 1949, when Davao’s population was 127,000, not even ten percent owned a single waling-waling plant.
This orchid was also a valued gift. American poet and satirist Dorothy Parker (1893-1967) was one of those who received the expensive plant, prompting her to write a poem which goes:
“Say it with Waling-waling/Love for thy neighbor/Love for the one you adorn/Love for the suffering/Say it with waling-waling/A feeling of admiration/A feeling of inspiration/A feeling—eye, on first meeting/Say it with waling-waling.”
But nothing is more emotional that the poem written by Msgr. Fernando Buyser y Aquino, who wrote a book titled ‘Kasingkasing sa Magbabalak: Pungpong sa mga Bulak ni Floripinas’ (Heart of a Poet: Wreath of Flowers for Floripinas) in 1938. One of the entries was the ‘Waling-waling’ (Tanslation mine).
Sa taliwala sa akong paghinuktok
Misantop lamang sa akong panumduman,
Nga ang bulak nga maayag ug mahumot
Madali nga abuton sa mga kadaut
Kay sa mga Alibangbang pasipad-an.
(While in a pensive mood, it came to my mind a flower that is beautiful and fragrant; it is easily damaged because it is abused by the butterfly.)
Dili ingon sa bulak sa Waling-waling
Nga walay kahumot nga nanimaho,
Hangtod kan-uman ka adlaw mahabilin,
Dili mapungis sa kusog sa hangin,
Ang kaputli niya labaw pa ka dato.
(Unlike the waling-waling flower, without odor to smell, endures for sixty days and cannot be turned away by the wind; his purity is even more expensive.)
Apan, ikaw dili ka gayud mabalhin
Kay ang baho mo mao lang gihapon,
Kay sa Makagagahum ka gigahin,
Sa kaaghop sa pamatasan salamin,
Kay sa kaanyag mo walay makatupong.
(But you don’t change because your scent remains. It was God who set you aside; your meekness is the mirror of behaviour; your beauty cannot be surpassed.)
Iwagi Bulak and tibuok nga yuta
Sa suga nga balaanon sa imong kaanyag,
Ang kahayag mo sa dayon musuta,
Sa buling sa sayop nga hunahuna
Ug sa ginharian sa ‘vicio’ mulaglag.
(Enlighten, Flower, the whole land with the sacred lustre of your loveliness. Your glow will discover the sin of a filthy mind and bring down the realm of vanity.)
Palina-is sa imong baho ang katilingban
Aron sa kahilayan paghingilin,
Kay mamalik ang maayong pamatasan
Nga sa mga bag-ong tubo buot igihan
Ug laksi-on sa among mga kasingkasing.
(Use your scent as incense of the community so they shy away from pleasures so the good traits tthis new generation abhors will be back, and tear away [the vices] from our hearts.)
What should have been the highlight of the journey of the waling-waling was the approval of Senate of House Bill No. 5655, which declared it a national flower in 2013 but it was vetoed. The flower would have joined the sampaguita, the country’s original national flower declared by Governor-General Frank Murphy through Proclamation No. 652 on February 1, 1934.
