Armenian-Singaporean Agnes Joaquim (Ashken Hovakimian) created Singapore’s national flower, the Vanda Miss Joaquim, through deliberate hybridization in her garden in the 1890s.

Despite her documented expertise as an accomplished horticulturist who won numerous first-prize medals for her plants, male botanists later claimed her achievement was merely an “accidental discovery” in her garden, diminishing her scientific accomplishment.

For over a century, this false narrative persisted in official accounts. Only in recent decades has research confirmed what her family always knew: Joaquim was no lucky amateur but a skilled hybridizer whose deliberate cross-breeding created a national symbol, yet her Armenian heritage and female achievement remained overshadowed in colonial Singapore.