Living schools

Quick now, how many local trees can you name? Let me make the question more difficult by specifying that they have to be native to our part of the world.

If you’re familiar with the University of the Philippines Diliman campus, you can start by rattling off the names of the men’s dorms, which are almost all named after trees. (The women’s dorms are named after flowers… reflecting gender stereotypes.)

Here are the dorms named after trees: Molave, Yakal, Ipil, Kamagong. There was also Narra, which had to be demolished. There’s a new dorm to be inaugurated next year: Acacia. But that tree, although much loved almost as a symbol of UP Diliman, is actually an introduced species.

There are many more native trees waiting for dorms—male, female, or coed—to be named after them: tanguile, apitong, bagtikan, antipolo, talisay, and tindalo, to name a few. UP Pampanga has a still-unnamed dorm and might want to consider the dao, considering there’s also a town in the province with that name.

If you’re feeling uncomfortable about women’s dorms named after trees, we do have ilang-ilang, which is actually a tree that yields fragrant flowers. Spell it “ylang ylang” and you have a very exotic, and expensive, oil.

There are many more native trees that earlier generations of Filipinos can quickly identify, together with their many uses: food, lumber, shelter. Alas, through the years, many of the trees have become endangered, some because of over-exploitation, as with narra, and others that were cut down to give way to urban sprawl.

There are few areas left in Metro Manila where you can find these trees, so I’m glad to report that UP Diliman inaugurated last week a Threatened Species Arboretum at the new Institute of Biology building. The project is supported by the Energy Development Corp.’s Binhi project, which has a goal of reforesting 10,000 hectares of land within 10 years. No less than EDC chair emeritus Oscar Lopez came to the inauguration, and I learned that his love for trees complements his mountain-climbing, which he still does even now in his 80s.

UP Arboretum
I delivered the closing remarks at the inauguration ceremony, and I mentioned how, in my six years as a student in UP Diliman that included taking a botany course, I never even knew we had a UP Arboretum, which is located behind Commonwealth Avenue near the Iglesia ni Cristo compound.

It turns out UP Arboretum used to be a popular site for school field trips but that through the years, it deteriorated from neglect. UP used to have a building inside but withdrew as informal settlers invaded the area. There are more than 10 hectares to this site but many of the trees are gone.

Together with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, UP is looking into how the arboretum can be rehabilitated. But meanwhile, within the main UP Diliman campus, we’re determined to keep at least 30 percent of the campus as green areas. We forget that trees are also important for leisure: Just having them around transforms an area into a place for renewing tired bodies and weary spirits, and I don’t mean the balete-dwellers.

The new arboretum will have a walkway, connecting the science complex to the rest of the campus, so I’m hopeful that as students walk through, they’ll learn to appreciate the trees and familiarize themselves with the names as well as uses.

Just last September we also inaugurated the Marine Science Institute Garden of Indigenous and Flowering Trees, which started out almost as a hobby of National Scientist Edgardo Gomez but which has now expanded into an impressive collection of hard-to-find species.

I reminded the Institute of Biology that the trees should be accompanied by information—with names in Tagalog, Cebuano, Ilokano and other major Philippine languages, as well as their uses. We will need to produce brochures, if not books, and websites that people can refer to for more information.

At the inauguration of the IB arboretum, the Philippine Tropical Forest Conservation Foundation (PTFCF) distributed copies of the book “Can We Live Without Trees,” which was copublished with Adarna Books. It’s intended as a children’s book but I found myself picking up new information on native trees from it. I had forgotten, as a veterinarian, that trees also provide valuable forage for animals, thriving even in times of drought, or in areas that lack water. Trees, too, are important as windbreakers, for protecting river banks, and for controlling erosion.

Quezon’s tindalo

Also at the inauguration, Reinero Medrano, a forester, provided background to EDC’s Binhi project. He mentioned how the whole country is now planted with mahogany and gmelina trees, both of which are “alien”species and which have created so many problems, growing too quickly and upsetting the local ecology.

Medrano spoke of the need to learn more about native trees, including which ones to use for particular sites. Trees like ipil, molave and narra are “sun-demanding,” he said, while tanguile, apitong, bagtikan, red lauan and kamagong are all right in shaded areas.

He also narrated a story that I thought would be worth sharing: He was once tasked with looking for tindalo trees to be used for propagation. He searched high and low for the tree—”high” in the literal sense of the word because it included going into mountain forests. The search was turning out to be futile when he learned about one tindalo tree that was doing well.

Of all places, that tree was in the Bacolod City plaza, and was planted by President Manuel Quezon in 1938. There’s a marker for the tree, but Medrano suspects even old-timers in Bacolod might not be aware of this historic tindalo.

That tree will be even more historic now that it has become a mother tree, with at least two “children”: one in Quezon Memorial Circle and the other in Malacanang. A presidential tree, indeed.

Let’s hope that in time, every town and city in the country will set aside a percentage of land for an arboretum that can also serve as a park and a source for seeds, seedlings and saplings. Even more importantly, they will serve the public as living schools, and schools for living.

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E-mail: mtan@inquirer.com.ph