An orchid was recently named after State Parliament President Ilse Aigner. Paphiopedilum Ilse Aigner is the name of the yellow-green flower with a black pattern from a breeder from Bischofswiesen. That’s something, after all, the point of giving a name is to “honor the godmother through the beauty and elegance of an orchid,” as it reportedly says on the certificate. The flower is intended to “carry recognition across borders and time to all over the world,” it goes on to say.
One can’t help but ask how recognition for Markus Söder should be appropriately carried “across borders and time to all over the world” – after all, there is no flower named after him yet and if there is, it is apparently not widely publicized been. He usually calls it “appropriate” when he is paid exaggerated homage, but apparently no one has ever made an association with a flower. Not even when he was hugging trees.
Not much is left of Söder’s green phase; he has just accused the Greens of being “militose” because they pettily complained that their members were being insulted more and more often. Söder probably wasn’t thinking about the pretty flowers of the mimosa; rather, the plant has become synonymous with supposedly particularly sensitive people because of a special property: it folds the feathery leaves when it is touched or shaken.
Seen in this way, it is not a flower that a politician would want to give its name to. Roses are therefore not suspicious; some are named after the Chancellors Konrad Adenauer, Helmut Schmidt and Helmut Kohl. Angela Merkel was allowed to do so Perfume rose Angie and be a godmother to an orchid with white-purple flowers in the Singapore Botanical Garden. It grows there too Renanthera Olaf Scholzalso an orchid, appropriately with red flowers.
Whether Markus Söder would like to join this ranks is one of the unanswered questions of our time. According to him, his place is in Bavaria, where someone could have planted a Söder linden tree or renamed the titan arum that always blooms in Bayreuth. This is the largest flower in the world, so appropriate, if not particularly fragrant. But there is always something.
At least no plant has ever been named after Hubert Aiwanger, not even a boring spruce tree. At least he was once able to choose a petunia as the flower of the year. However, it has an innocuous name. Alpenglow is the name of the plant.