Vanda Miss Joaquim
Printed on:
• Ship series all denominations
• Portrait $5 and $1000
• 1990 SG25 $50, 2015 SG50 $10, and 2017 CIA50 $50 commemorative notes
The Vanda Miss Joaquim is Singapore’s national flower. Many people wrongly think that our first series of notes after independence—the Orchid series—featured the Vanda Miss Joaquim. That is not the case. The Orchid series was launched in 1967 and discontinued in 1976, several years before the flower was officially named our national flower in April 1981. The first time Vanda Miss Joaquim appeared on our notes was in the Ship series issued in the 1980s, where every note had the national flower on its back. It then appeared again on the back of the Portrait $5 note, and in the background of the Portrait $1000 note. It is also found in several commemorative notes: the 1990 SG25, the 2015 SG50 $10 note, and the 2017 CIA50 note, the last of which featured the flower within the CIA50 logo, alongside the Simpur from Brunei.
The origins of the Vanda Miss Joaquim sparked debate for many years. While it was widely believed that Agnes Joaquim, an Armenian horticulturist living in Singapore, bred the orchid in her garden in 1893, some people believed it was a natural hybrid she had simply found. This was settled in 2016 when the National Parks Board and National Heritage Board reviewed all evidence and officially confirmed that Agnes Joaquim had indeed created the hybrid.
In recent years, scientists who study plants reclassified the orchid’s genus. They found that the parent plants of Vanda Miss Joaquim actually belong to a different group, called Papilionanthe, not Vanda. So, the orchid’s official scientific name was changed to Papilionanthe Miss Joaquim. However, our government chose to keep its original name Vanda Miss Joaquim because that name is already well known and has a strong place in our national identity.
In 2002, the Vanda Miss Joaquim Pavilion was opened at the corner of Tanjong Pagar and Craig Road. This small garden marks the site of Agnes Joaquim’s former home and includes a sculpture surrounded by blooms of the national flower.
1. Image by LittleDayOut.com. Source: https://www.littledayout.com/vanda-miss-joaquim-pavilion-remembering-the-origins-of-singapores-national-flower.