(Inírida) When Ruben Dario Carianil began planting the red flowers of the Inirida in the Colombian Amazon, he was laughed at by his relatives who asked him why he was going to “suffer” for “weeds”, the indigenous horticulturist told AFP.
Ten years later, the plant has become so popular that it has been chosen as the emblem of COP16, the UN’s main conference on biodiversity, which will be held from October 21 to 1er November in Cali, in the southwest of Colombia.
Mr. Carianil, an indigenous man of the Curripako people, stands before his fields, an enchanting sea of small red stars with hard, pointed petals.
On a plot of land on the outskirts of the city that gave the flower its name, the professor managed to domesticate the wild plant. He now exports it to the United States, Europe and Asia.
“See where we’re going […] “I am very happy,” he says in the scorching sun of the river port of 30,000 inhabitants, which can only be reached by plane or after a boat trip lasting several days.
“Eternal Flowers”
“We have been playing with it (the Inirida flower) for thousands of years, no one here has discovered anything. What I did was just experiment,” says Mr. Carianil.
The plantation is family-run and is called “Liwi: Eternal Flowers” because the buds retain their shape even years after being cut.
Together with his wife Martha Toledo and biologist Mateo Fernandez, Mr. Carianil has managed to make the Inirida flower flourish, a common name that encompasses two distinct species, one that grows mainly during the rainy season and the other, smaller, in summer.
“I try to transform indigenous knowledge into scientific knowledge,” Carianil emphasizes.
The flowers only grow in parts of the department of Guainia (of which Inirida is the capital), and in some areas of the Venezuelan Amazon, a few kilometers from the plantation.
Mr Fernandez, one of the first to research the species, points to its beauty, its resistance to floods and droughts, and its ability to adapt to survive in a region with relatively infertile soils.
It is precisely this resilience that led the organizers of COP16 to choose it as their emblem.
“Little piece of jungle”
“We are the only Amazonian flower farm” in Colombia, proudly claims Martha Toledo, a philosopher by training. She knows of only one similar initiative in Peru.
Seen from the air, the crop is clearly distinguishable from the flower plantations that abound in the Andean regions of Colombia, where they are grown in monoculture, lined up in regular rows often under plastic greenhouses that spoil the beauty of the mountainous landscape.
Here, the buds spread over about twenty hectares amidst a variety of native shrubs and even a patch of dense forest.
“We learned to read how the flower grows in the ecosystem. When you buy a flower in Inirida, you take home a little piece of the jungle,” smiles M.me Toledo.
The plantations are inspired by traditional indigenous crops: fertilizers and pesticides are prohibited.
It is a “political bet,” explains the horticulturist. “We are proposing a meeting between the local economy and the global economy. We believe that the department must develop in an environmental way and that is a political process.”
Beijing Express
Decades ago, Inirida flowers were abundant in the pastures surrounding the small local airport. Visitors “would get off planes and come here to pick all the flowers,” Carianil recalls.
In 1989, concerned about the conservation of the species, the government banned the picking of flowers in their natural habitat. The ban was extended until 2005, when the environmental authority authorized its supervised “exploitation”, provided that it did not threaten wild populations.
So far, only Liwi’s plantation has managed to reproduce the flower and obtain a license to market it, first locally, then in Bogota and, after countless logistical challenges, in other countries.
Located nearly 700 kilometers from the capital and disconnected from the country’s road network, Inirida is “an island surrounded by jungle,” describes Martha Toledo.
In October 2022, a first shipment was made to China. “At the airport, they applauded […] “It’s crazy that from such a remote place in Colombia, a box is sent” to Beijing, the founder of Liwi remembers with pride.