A ‘once upon a time’ book

Leaf through the new book “Philippine Native Trees 101.” Early on, you’ll find that it measures up to the subtitle: “Up Close and Personal.”

In one of the book’s 137 personal accounts, dzUP reporter  Raymund Villanueva recalls Tropical Storm “Ondoy” which ripped Luzon in September 2009, killing 747 and inflicting $1.09 billion in damages. In Barangay Bagong Silangan, Quezon City, 36 persons, including a 2-week-old baby, escaped drowning. How?

They clambered up a  dita  tree and perched on its branches “from 10 that morning to 3 dawn the next day. Floodwaters were still waist deep” when they inched down. Amidst the ruins, the tree towered unscathed. “My vote is for more  dita  trees in our cities.”

Hortica Filipina Foundation and Green Convergence published this book which depicts 108 of over 3,000 native species. They range from the critically endangered “Starburst” or “Bagawak Morado” to the “the Landscaping World’s Toast”—“lubi-lubi  or  niyog-niyogan.” Stunning photos illustrate the book. They include Ilocos Norte’s  loktob to the  kamalan  of Isabela. Many were culled from the archives of the late Leonardo Co, foremost Filipino authority in ethnobotany.

Co was killed with his guides while doing research in a forest reservation in Kananga, Leyte on Nov. 15, 2010. The 16th Infantry Battalion troops claimed it engaged communist rebels then. An independent mission, led by physicist Dr. Giovanni Tapang, reported there was no fire fight. The gunfire originated from the military. The Department of Justice filed homicide raps against two officers and eight enlisted men. It was murder, Co’s family protested.

Typhoons “Yoling and “Juaning” confirmed Co’s advocacy for native trees. Only native trees like  igot  and  pili  survived their fury.

Hortica Filipina Foundation’s Imelda Sarmiento writes in the  preface: “When asked for names of our native trees, most stop at narra. Few know that 67 percent of our native trees are found nowhere else. Where are they now?” Sarmiento asks. “For years, I planted acres of alien species at La Mesa dam, Tarlac and around the metropolis.” Such programs wrecked biodiversity pools by foisting ill-suited alien tree species.

“Philippine Native Trees 101” will “hardly rectify some of the environmental wrongs we’ve done,” Sarmiento adds. “But it is a start… toward reintroducing our own trees to our own people.”

“So, what’s wrong with our  molave?” we asked 11 years back in an opinion piece.  Vitex  parviflora  is Philippine mahogany. It is the legendary choice for altars, mansion posts, even handles for the Moro kris, that Jan. 12, 2002 column noted. Who grouses about  tindalo? Tough wood from afzelia rhomboidea  encases fragments of the original cross that Ferdinand Magellan planted on Cebu’s seashore in 1521.

Indigenous trees, however, are given short shrift within many reforestation programs. Too many  reforesters work by the yardstick that holds: “Imported is  sikat  (tops).”  Cash, time and effort are funneled into monoculture plantations, sown to nine “introduced exotics.” These include gmelina and teak from India; Malaysia’s  labang  or candlenut tree; and mahogany from Central America.

“Monoculture of exotics is of low diversity,” Franz Seidenschwarz of Munich University told a University of San Carlos forum in 2002. They’re so unlike the original and mixed forests of Cebu. “Instead, a blinkered preference for imports denigrates native trees.

As a result, the genetic base of plantations are constricted. Worse, it opens windows of vulnerability to disease. “Valuable native species are thinning,” cautioned Seidenschwarz, who is married to a Filipina.

Nonbotanists stitched “Philippine Native Trees 101” together for nonbotanists. It breaks from rigid academic formats. Contents follow nature’s contours instead. There’s a chapter on “A Mangrove Eco-Park,” another on “Coastal and Beach Trees” to “Mainstreaming Native Trees in Urban Greening.”

“Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it,” political theorist Johanna “Hannah” Arendt  wrote. Indeed “Once upon a time” remains the time-tested  tool for teaching. Personal accounts are a unique mark of this book. Examples:

On a Sierra Madre Range, botanist Ulysses Ferras was taken ill. The nearest hospital was a day’s trek away. Dumagat guides  stripped bark from the  kalingag  tree and brewed a crude jungle tea. That enabled Ferras to complete the month-long study mission.

Five years later, an endoscopy revealed Ferras had hiatal hernia and remains under medication.  “I look back in wonder how that medicinal tree sustained me.”

“It was love at first sight,” wrote Jo Consuelo Quimpo, conservationist. “Why a tree that rivals Japan’s cherry blossoms is called ‘balai lamok’ (or house of mosquitoes) baffles. Sacred garlic pear or  salingbobog  once dotted Mother Ignacia Street in Quezon City. In mid-April of the year, (the tree) explodes in color flowers that last much longer than cherry blossoms. Yet, it has not been cultivated by local horticulturists for urban landscaping.”

“In two years, I’ll be 100 years old,” writes Teofista Zuñiga of Virac, Catanduanes. There are 24 children in her four-generation family. “In childhood, Catanduanes did not suffer from typhoons of today’s standard. In my mid-life, storms were annual guests. In my twilight years, there’ve been fewer storms.

“But some things don’t change.” The “anonang  tree remained constant. For our fevers, pounded  anonang  leaves were applied. Its juice became our paste. After Catanduanes’  fiercest storms, coconut trees are strewn all over. But native trees like  igot,  pili  and the   anonang  remain standing”—once upon a time.

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