Aren’t all trees created equal, each with its particular beauty, origin, characteristics, uses or simple raison d’etre?
While that is certainly true, in recent years there has been marked attention in the form of publications, research, seedling banks, and advocacy activities calling attention to our native trees and promoting their appreciation.
Perhaps one of the reasons for this is to counter the sad awareness of biodiversity loss as spreading urbanization and other land uses have caused trees to be sacrificed.
Recently, telling someone from the town of Catmon in Cebu that I was delighted with how my katmon tree was growing in Valencia, she said there still had been many in her childhood, but almost none today.
Most people would probably be hard put to identify which (of the remaining) trees around us are native or alien. Certainly, we’ve got so used to seeing mahogany, mangium, eucalyptus, gmelina, the so-called Indian trees, and even acacia, that they seem to be part of our natural environment when in fact, they are all exotic species.
Walking with friends around the University of the Philippines campus two years ago, I came upon a garden that hadn’t been there in my years as a student.
Where a parking lot had been between the UP Theater and the Film Center is now the Washington Sycip Garden of Native Trees. Inaugurated in 2013, the garden has young trees of 100 indigenous and endemic species growing along meandering pathways, each with an information marker.
What a lovely triumph of trees over cars (when mostly the reverse happens)!
The garden provides students and visitors the opportunity to experience native trees they might otherwise never see, in different stages of leaf or fruit or flower at different times of the year. (And this in a mere 4,700 sq.m. lot — local officials, take note, and explain why similar efforts can’t be made here.)
Which brings us to our own native tree advocate, Rene Vendiola of Liptong, Bacong.
In his Liptong Woodland, Rene has gathered or propagated 226 varieties of trees and plants, with amazing dedication and expertise developed over the years. Rene is a valuable resource for the urgently- needed work of urban greening (is it being done?), and other tree-planting projects as he will advocate for the use of native species, the seedlings for which he can supply.
A consultation was called last week to approve the cutting of 52 trees (mahogany and gmelina) to make way for a new Dumaguete City High School building. When replacement planting was discussed and the ENRO representatives stated they could supply mahogany and mangium trees, Rene Vendiola suggested to choose native trees instead.
It might be instructive here to see a text from James LaFrankie whose Harvard PhD is in biology, and who has worked and written extensively on Asian trees: “Does it make a difference whether we plant the foreign mahogany from Bolivia rather than molave or any other trees native to the Philippines? Yes, it makes an enormous difference, and the reason, in one word, is ecology.
Molave, as a native species, has a relationship to the land, water, and organisms that has developed over a million years. Certain fungi live with the roots. Certain insects feed on the plant parts, while others pollinate the flower. Birds and mammals live along the branches and feed on the seeds. No such relationship exists for the newcomer.
Ten hectares of mahogany is a “dead zone“ in terms of biodiversity. There are no birds, no insects, only a nearly dead soil due to the lethal chemicals that leak from the rotting leaves. Native species are rarely found as seedlings beneath the canopy and so, most significantly, there is no future for 10 hectares of mahogany.”
There might, of course, be profit from the wood sold, but the richness of our native environment has suffered.
Happily, in the case of the Dumaguete City High School, the consensus seems to have been reached to plant native trees.
It will be wonderful in a few years’ time, to have at least this area of the City where native trees flourish, and where students and visitors to the school can experience a connection to uniquely-Filipino nature.
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Author’s email: h.cecilia7@gmail.com
