At last! Everything is set for the staging of the much awaited 2nd Flora Filipina Expo on February 6-16, 2009 at the Orchidarium Park, Quezon City Hall, East Avenue corner Elliptical Road, Diliman, Quezon City. Through the leadership of the Philippine Orchid Society (POS), the country’s various garden clubs and the major key players of the ornamental plant industry will convene in this prestigious event at the iconic heart of Quezon City. This year’s event will be much larger than the previous one 3 years ago and will again put the Philippines in the map of floriculture tourism.

Past POS President Mr. Manolo Lopez and Congresswoman Cynthia Villar will be the guests of honor who would be leading the ribbon cutting ceremony of the Flora Filipina this coming February 05, at 4:00 in the afternoon.

The event aims to boost the morale of the country’s horticultural industry, with the blessings of the Department of Tourism, Department of Agriculture and the Quezon City government. The Flora Filipina Expo has become a major Philippine tourism event, and it aims to create awareness among Filipino horticulture enthusiasts and also foreign plant growers about the beauty and value of Philippine plant species. This is also an event wherein we are inviting foreigners to visit our islands and see our wide collection of flora species.

The Flora Filipina Expo is proud to have about 90 commercial booths who will be trading to the public selected and rare orchids, ferns, bromeliads, aroids, palms, flowering annuals, hoyas, epiphytes, bonsai, tree seedlings, seeds, including garden accessories, fertilizers, and pesticides.

A 2-day Scientific Conference will also be staged at the Conference Hall of the Bureau of Soils, (besides the Department of Agriculture), Visayas Avenue corner Elliptical Road, Diliman, Quezon City on February 6 - 7, 2009. Topics includes: production and research results in orchids, bromeliads, ferns, hibiscus, palms, cacti, succulents, mussaenda, rafflesia, the use of beneficial microorganisms, landscaping, horticultural internet marketing and a lot more. Along with these are presentation of horticultural technologies in France, Hawaii (US), Thailand and Singapore.

There will also be a free-daily lecture at the exhibit site. With this, the event is expecting more than 25,000 visitors. Foreign delegates and participants from the provinces will be arriving on the first week of February to attend the opening of the event, the conference and the special organized tours.

The Philippines is certainly is a rich plant habitat and is truly an ideal place to grow both tropical and semi-temperate crops. Some of the rare orchid species that can actually be found in the country include the majestic Waling-Waling (Vanda sanderiana), which is the "Queen of the Philippine Orchids," Vanda luzonica, Phalaenopsis amabilis and other Phalaenopsis species, the Black orchid (Trichoglottis brachiata), various Lady slipper orchids (Paphiopedilum species), just to name a few. This season is the flowering of the Dendrobium anosmum (Sanggumay) and the Butterfly Orchids (Phalaenopsis species and hybrids). For ornamentals, we have the jade vine (Strongylodon macrobotrys), various Alocasia species, an assortment of fern species and allies, Hoya and Discidia vines, palms and cycads, and about 27,000 species more of ornamental plants.

Aside from species, the country can grow and mass produce a lot of introduced or imported ornamental plant hybrids like Euphorbias, Hibiscus, Aglaonema, Alocasia, Cacti, Succulents, and Cattleya orchids. With this, the Philippines certainly has much to offer in terms of diversity of garden plants for trade.

The country has a high potential of mass producing and exporting plants abroad, however, we just need to identify problems in marketing which are causing barriers in the expansion of the Philippine plant trade export industry. With this Flora Filipina event, the organizers hope to unite the local ornamental plant industry, provide technical assistance and market opportunities, and in a larger picture push forth the positive growth of the industry.