Rediscovering Eden:

How one man's journey breathed new life into Sri Lanka's botanical legacy

- BY IFHAM NIZAM

At Genesis by Dilmah in Colombo, where the walls are lined with reminders of Sri Lanka's natural wealth and the scent of Ceylon tea lingers in the air, an extraordinary gathering took place. But this was no typical book launch. It was a celebration of rediscovery, a call to conscience, and perhaps most importantly, a testament to the enduring richness of Sri Lanka's forests.

The event marked the unveiling of "Discovering Additions to the Flora of Sri Lanka", a 700-page botanical volume that documents more than 200 new or newly recorded flowering plant species in Sri Lanka. At its heart is a man whose name many in the scientific establishment had not heard a decade ago: Dr. Himesh Jayasinghe, a civil servant turned full-time field botanist, whose journey has become a modern-day parable of purpose and persistence.

Roots of a forgotten legacy

Taking the stage with characteristic modesty and erudition, Dr. Rohan Pethiyagoda, globally recognised biodiversity scientist and the 2022 Blue Planet Laureate, offered a sweeping historical account of Sri Lanka's place in the global story of botany. He began with Paul Hermann, the Dutch physician who arrived in 1672, and who not only translated Sinhala plant names into Latin but also laid the groundwork for one of the earliest books on tropical botany, Musaeum Zeylanicum.

Hermann's work was revolutionary. He collected over a thousand plant specimens, many of which remain preserved in Dutch herbaria today. His legacy inspired botanical luminaries like Carl Linnaeus, the father of modern taxonomy, who named numerous species based on Hermann's collections.

"The historical richness of Sri Lanka's flora," Pethiyagoda said, "has long fascinated the world. But that legacy gave us what I call the anaesthetic of familiarity. We assumed we knew it all. And so, we stopped looking."

But as this book shows, there's plenty we still don't know.

Life rewritten in green