Lankan orchid named after Turkish PM

Sri Lankan Honorary Consul General of Turkey Bharathi Wijeratne has moved to name a species of orchid after Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan,.

Wijeratne is also working to get a flower named after Turkish President Abdullah Gul.

Wijeratne, who lives in Colombo, renamed an orchid in the Dendrobium genus Dendrobium Recep Tayyip Erdogan and had shipments of it sent under that name to England's Royal Horticultural Society.

A gift of Dendrobium Recep Tayyip Erdogan flowers will be sent to Prime Minister Erdogan himself this month. She said: "I thought a great deal about how I could bestow a gift upon Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who visited our country, and the President of one of the first countries to aid us [in the aftermath of the tsunami], the country to provide the most aid. Our gift to Turkey, a richer and stronger nation, had to be something that would not be forgotten for eternity. I'm going to proudly present the flower to him."

Wijeratne said 102 years after the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries, President Gul, who invited a Sri Lankan president to his country, would also have a flower named after him Today's Zaman.