Wala Lang
The economy is tanking—travel is down and with it hotels and resorts, malls are quiet, restaurants are empty, movie houses are dark, churches are bare, construction has stopped. Gardening is a bright spot, a big thanks to ladies-who-lunch and men-who-drink.
The ladies have more time precisely because they can’t go out to lunch, thereby saving the hours they would otherwise spend on actually lunching, gossiping, beauty parloring, and waiting in traffic to and from.
They have extra money too. Benefit dinners and fashion shows are out, so they save on tickets, gowns, contributions, hairdos and makeup, pimple removal and Botox treatments, dinner and lunch bills since there are few and small birthday and wedding parties, and there are no invitations to reciprocate.
With reduced marital and/or partner requirements and fewer nights out with the boys, men too have more time and disposable cash.
“Chandeliers – check; Borloñgans and Tapayas – check; wine cellar – check; sauna and gym – check. Swimming- and whirl- pools – done; barbeque pit – sizzling; gazebo – up; grotto - gone. Ano pa more?” Plants!
Thus is born a generation of plant collectors, plantitas and plantitos.
Jinkee Pacquiao added high octane fuel to the fire with her internet post of herself lounging before an impressive alocasia macrorrhiza variegata (i.e., a gabi with giant green and white leaves). Comments on her post were along the lines of “uwian na” and “nanalo na.”
Other celebrities like Ethel Booba have also been videoing themselves and posting on YouTube, tours of their gardens and rows of supposedly rare plants, so much so that plants have become a topic of sosyalan conversation, an area of one-upmanship so serious that some plantitas have reportedly begun selling their Hermės bags and switching to botanicals as a means of stunning their frenemies.
They can’t go out and show off their bags, so making gardens is the new social competition arena. Having plants announces concern over the environment (never mind that plant collecting harms jungles), sophistication, wealth (you already have everything else), and scientific interest (who else can rattle off those Latin names?).
Thus a boom in plant prices. A long-time enthusiast friend tells me that a plant he bought for P6,000 10 years ago now sells for P150,000. His top three rare, coveted, and super expensive plants are philodendron spiritus sancti, P1.4 million (it looks like a gabi plant on a diet); monstera mint, P1.0 million; and philodendron billietiae variegata, P300,000.
Quezon City Memorial Circle is a good source of plants. Zalora and Shopee have plants in their catalogues. Plants are on ebay and of course one can order from nurseries in Thailand, the UK, the US, and elsewhere. There are lots of enthusiastic innocents who pay sky high, however. Depending on how rich, knowledgeable, and eager the seller thinks you are, asking price for a large green-and-white alocasia can be anywhere from P30,000 to P500,000. Even the plain green gabi with giant leaves that grows everywhere (it unexpectedly sprouted beside a garden faucet at home) could go for P20,000. It’s caveat emptor in the world of green thumbs.
A tip for upwardly mobile plantitos and plantitas. When boasting about your blooming waling-waling, describe instead the vivid colors and large petals of your vanda sanderiana; don’t just call your GF’s corsage purple cattleya, be more specific, it’s a cattleya lueddemanniana; the white butterfly orchid by the oxygen tank is a phalaenopsis something-or-other; and sanggumay, that’s dendrobium anosmum.
Pretty soon we may be breakfasting on carica (that’s papaya); eating hamburger with solanum lycopersicum (tomato) ketchup, and snacking on musa acuminata—I have to check if that is latundán, buñgulan, butuan, sabá, inarnibal, cavendish, and/or some other saging.
Comments are cordially invited, addressed to [email protected]