Wala Lang

Ask someone to name some trees and the answer might be, “narra, coconut, pine tree … … ano pa nga ba—banana?” PWH chops down whatever stands in the way of road widening. Trees are truncated to protect Meralco and PLDT lines. Mango trees could be respected but everything else is firewood or “man-in-a-barrel” material. This is tragic—the Philippines has something like 3,600 kinds of native trees, many found nowhere else, with construction, medicinal, nutritional, ornamental, environmental, and other blessings. 

Others appreciate what we take for granted. Indonesia’s Bogor Botanical Gardens has a stand of maybe 150-year-old lauan trees whose seedlings came from here. The story is also told that, once in Singapore, then first lady Imelda Romualdez Marcos admired a beautiful tree with large leaves and plate-size white flowers with a red center only to be told that it was our katmon. Dr. Jaime Galvez Tan relates that he had not seen any bagras tree—the Mindanao eucalyptus—here and was astonished to find hundreds of them in Oahu, Hawaii. Bagras is our only eucalyptus tree, but Dr. Tan maintains that its rainbow-color trunk makes it more beautiful than any of Australia’s 600 species.

Happily, awareness is growing, spearheaded by leaders like Oscar Lopez who has begun the BINHI project of the Energy Development Corporation and Imelda P. Sarmiento and Angelina P. Galang of Hortica Filipina Foundation, Inc. The Zuellig Group and individuals like noted neurologist and art patron Dr. Jovencio Çuanang have also seized the initiative.

I haven’t been there, but the Washington SyCip Garden of Native Trees in the U.P. Diliman campus looks like an excellent introduction to innocents like me. It was inaugurated in 2012 with Daniel Zuellig presiding. Located behind the U.P. Carillion, it has 99 species of native trees and two of palms. Among the factoids in its fascinating guidebook:

• History. antipolo – used for musical instruments. The miraculous image of Nstra. Sra. De la Paz y Buenviaje was discovered on a branch of an antipolo tree; duñgon – a heavy wood that was used in building balañgay, the seafaring boat that brought the first Filipinos here;
• Exports. ilang-ilang – its fragrant flower is the base of some super expensive French perfumes;
• Happy times. kalumpít – its fruit is used to sweeten the coconut-based lambanóg;
• Awful times. lagundî – its leaves are a herbal medicine for colds, flu, asthma, bronchitis, and who knows, maybe Covid-19;
• Useful for showing off. kamagóng – better known as mabolo. Its heavy and lustrous black wood is used for the best furniture; mangkonó – described as our jungle “superstar” with its red and white flowers. It’s a sinker, ironwood so dense it does not float in water; supa – a dark wood that produces oil used for paint and paper. My corridor at home has 15-foot-long, two-feet-wide supa planks rescued from a demolished house on Manila’s Lepanto Street; tindalo – along with kamagóng and molave, it is the most treasured Philippine furniture woods. Pink when newly cut, it turns red-purple with age; and toóg – the Philippines’ tallest tree.

The recently begun Pinto Arboretum promises to be a terrific destination, part of the already spectacular Pinto Art Museum in Antipolo. Arboretum curator Ronald Achacoso says the 5,000-square-meter site already has more than 500 plant species of which 200 are trees, including rarities such as our native oak that ordinarily grows at altitudes of 500+ meters; the Philippine varieties of cinnamon, nutmeg, and lychee; the bantolinao, a species of ebony popular among bonsai enthusiasts; and super rare ornamentals like the beautiful toad lily found in Mindanao’s Tasaday territory and balai lamok, whose long-lasting white and purple flowers are described as more beautiful than Japan’s cherry blossoms.

Ronald Achacoso says the 5,000-square-meter site already has more than 500 plant species of which 200 are trees, including rarities such as our native oak that ordinarily grows at altitudes of 500+ meters.

Awareness leads to appreciation and hope for our native trees. All too common is the experience of finding a rare tree gone just months later—the road has been widened, a building has taken its place, it died because someone burnt garbage or cooked dinner at its base.

Achacoso is worried about a couple of malak malak trees in Forbes Park that could be the only ones of their kind in Metro Manila. He spied the spectacular metallic gold sheen of their leaves from the street. Apparently located in an inner court, this seems to be a case of tree vs. house. He adds that alien plants could harbor pests that native plants cannot fight. Once dap-dap trees with their red flowers were common in the U.P. campus but they were defenseless against foreign wasps that came with alien trees and now few know or remember what dap-dap looks like.

Some farsighted LGUs have gone into reforestation. The highway through Bilar on the way to Bohol’s Chocolate Hills is beautiful. Planted on both sides with fast growing mahogany trees from Bolivia, one is suddenly in a cool and shady forest like the one that could have been there before kaingin farmers moved in. Erosion has been stopped and flash floods prevented, rainwater conserved, and useful wood grown. U.P. Professor James V. LaFranckie, Jr. points out, however, that it is silent, empty of birds, insects or small wild animals, and even other plants because the alien mahogany yields nothing—fruits, flowers, leaves, bark—useful to our native wildlife, not even to fungi and other soil organisms. Indeed excrete substances hostile to them. Reforestation with native trees that once grew there would have produced better results.

There is no poem as lovely as our native trees, trees that look at God all day.

Notes: (a) The quotes are from the poem “Trees” by Joyce Kilmer; (b) An active group of native tree enthusiasts describe their favorites in a series of books (“Philippine Native Trees”) published by the Energy Development Corporation headed by Oscar Lopez and Hortica Filipina Foundation, Inc. under Imelda P. Sarmiento and Angelina P. Galang; and (c) One has to look around to find native tree seedlings. Until the Pinto Arboretum nursery starts operating, one can try U.P. Los Banos and Southern Luzon State University in Lucban, Quezon; and (d) The acacia trees along Roxas Avenue in front of Diliman’s Vargas Museum have been lifting their leafy arms to pray for almost exactly 66 years ago to the day when my U.P. Business Ad classmates and I planted them on Arbor Day 1953, then celebrated on the second Saturday of September.

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