Leonardo Legaspi Co (December 29, 1953 in Manila â November 15, 2010 in Kananga, Leyte) was a Filipino botanist and plant taxonomist who was considered the "foremost authority in ethnobotany in the Philippines" during his lifetime.
Co's education in Botany did not follow the usual track. He did not finish his bachelor's degree until 2008 because he was always too busy doing research out in the field. Dr. Perry Ong, director of the Institute of Biology at the University of the Philippines Diliman summed it up at Co's wake by saying "Leonard Co entered UP as botany freshman in the early 70s and never left". While practicing acupuncture he met his wife Glenda Flores, whom he married on June 12, 1990.
In 2008, with Co already informally considered one of the foremost experts in his field, University of the Philippines Diliman named him the last graduate of the BS degree in Botany; some time in the decades since Co's enrollment, the course had been merged with the bachelor's degree in Zoology to form the Biology program. This unorthodox academic path also earned Co another distinction in the annals of UP: Co submitted his book on the medicinal plants of the Cordilleras in lieu of a thesis, making him the only student to graduate from the BS Botany degree without submitting a thesis.
Co worked as a museum researcher at the University of the Philippines Institute of Biology, and as a senior botanist at the Conservation International-Philippines.
Leonard Co was the founding president of the Philippine Native Plants Conservation Society. He is credited for discovering eight new species of plants. Aside from these, two species of Philippine endemic plants have been named in his honor: the Mycaranthes leonardi orchid and the Rafflesia leonardi, a parasitic plant species of the genus Rafflesia endemic to the Philippines and known for bearing the third largest flower in the world.
Co curated a checklist called Digital Flora, an online guide that lists more than 10,000 species of plants that indigenous to the Philippines. Since Co's death, the list has been maintained by colleagues Julie Barcelona, Pieter Pelser, and Daniel Nickrent.
A year before his death, Co also documented the flora of the Bataan National Park, coming up with a catalog that lists 160 unique plant species, essential for guiding reforestation efforts on the 23,668-hectare park centered around Mount Natib.
Co was a University of the Philippines Biology professor and a consultant for the Energy Development Corporation. He was tasked the firm's former chairman by the firm's former chairperson Oscar Lopez to replant seeds in a geothermal power plant at Kananga, Leyte<nowiki>.