Papilionanda Mimi Palmer

Description

Papilionanda Mimi Palmer, an orchid hybrid, is the offspring of the cross between Papilionanda Tan Chay Yan and Vanda tessellata.

“Mimi Lim Palmer was a granddaughter of Straits Chinese physician Dr Lim Boon Keng. She had a rather traumatic childhood because her father Walter Lim, a banker, committed suicide to avoid interrogation by the Kempeitai during the Japanese Occupation of Singapore. Mimi was later adopted because her widowed mother could not cope. After the war, Mimi went on to become a piano teacher. My father, one of her more reluctant pupils, remembers ‘Aunty Mimi’ as being rather austere and strict.

Mimi Lim married Ken Palmer, who worked for beverage company Fraser and Neave (F&N). Following OSSEA’s revival in the late 1950s, the Society’s monthly meetings were held at F&N headquarters, and there is little doubt that the orchid connection gave Ken Palmer opportunity to have Gem Nursery’s hybrid named for his wife in 1963, the year in which Singapore merged with the Federation of Malaysia and also hosted the World Orchid Conference for the very first time.

The registered parentage was long disputed, with the identity of the seed parent Papilionanda Tan Chay Yan clearly in doubt. Gillian Khew’s DNA sequence analysis has confirmed that there is no Papilionanthe (teres) DNA in this hybrid’s ancestry, which proves it is not a true Papilionanda but really a strap-leafed Vanda with Vanda sanderiana, Vanda insignis and of course its pollen parent Vanda tessellata in its ancestry.” — Dr. Emerys Chew