Every tree has a story, a name, a role in healing, Glenda Flores Co told her audience. She spoke in elegant Filipino—“Bawa’t puno ay may kwento, may pangalan, may silbi sa paghilom”—at the close of the program held to launch the book “Philippine Native Trees 404: Rooted and Rising” last April 28 at Club Filipino in Greenhills, San Juan. 

The 924-page book produced by Green Convergence (for Safe Food, Healthy Environment and Sustainable Economy) is, as its title states, the fourth in a series of volumes on native trees and the necessity of knowing, planting and protecting them. The vast range of the subject including the photography, as well as the book’s sheer heft, is at once provocative and impressive.

On the cover, the names of the botanist Leonard L. Co and Oscar M. Lopez, whom the publisher Imelda P. Sarmiento calls “Father Nature”—both no longer of this earth—are listed as “the spirit/the inspiration.”

Glenda Co is the widow of Leonard Co, who was shot dead by soldiers while engaged in research in a forest in Kananga, Leyte, in November 2010. Every attentive Filipino journalist knows the details. Two of his companions (forester Sofronio Cortez and farmer Julius Borromeo) were killed along with him and two others were wounded—fired at at close range by the soldiers who eventually claimed that Co and the others were caught in a crossfire with alleged New People’s Army rebels. 

The court case remains unresolved after all these years. Justice is still absent, Glenda Co said. And as is constantly pointed out in every year that his death anniversary is commemorated, the loss of the country’s foremost ethnobotanist—who studied how different cultures make use of native plants for food and medicine, shelter and rituals; who was also a conservationist, acupuncturist, linguist, and mentor to many; and whose knowledge of Philippine plants and trees has been described as “unparalleled”—is immeasurable.

In her publisher’s note, Sarmiento acknowledged “our lamented and sorely missed Leonard L. Co” as “the spiritual author” of the book series. She said Co had given her a hard drive containing research documents and photographs of native plants and trees only three months before he was killed. 

“In effect, he passed on to me and to all of us the duty to carry on what he had helped start,” Sarmiento wrote, adding that the photographs in this volume were “borrowed” from Co and “the field botanists he had helped train and inspire,” such as Ulysses F. Ferreras and Nestor A. Bartolome.

Readers, including those new to the subject and only faintly aware of the perils of deforestation, would perhaps be amazed at the information offered in the book. Not many know that the Philippines has 3,600 native tree species, and that the popular ones such as mahogany, gmelina, acacia or ipil-ipil are of foreign origin. In this volume are personal accounts of encounters with and memories of certain native trees whose names trip melodiously on the tongue—to list a few: the wawa, lapo-lapo, guyong-guyong, duyok-duyok, and kapa-kapa, the husuhus, kalulot, malintungau, and dilak manuk, the agawyoy, matobato, and marabarani (a member—surprise—of the rose family)…

The young scientists Jayson A. Mansibang, MSc and Lillian Jennifer V. Rodriguez, PhD ensured the veracity of the scientific information in the accounts. FPH, a Lopez Group company, is cited for its generous contribution to the book’s publication. Also among those acknowledged are the Angara and Soliven families, as well as the Constantino Foundation’s Renato Redentor “Red” Constantino, who is himself immersed in studies in colonialism and its enduring effects on agriculture and climate change. (The US colonial government ordered the planting of certain foreign tree species in the Philippines for timber; these proved invasive and ultimately dangerous to local vegetation and wildlife.) 

The series on Philippine native trees is a continuing endeavor that draws on an active lookback at the legacy of those whose work and mission blazed trails and now push those who have taken up the task—a growing community, from indications—to persevere in their advocacy. And ultimately lay the basis for the next generation’s work in extensive research and in bringing about correct tree-planting projects in ancestral domains and elsewhere.

In her remarks, Glenda Co raised the importance of going beyond reading the book. She sounded a three-pronged call: to plant native trees (“magtanim”), to impart knowledge of the rich variety of native species to others (“magturo”), and to resist the wide-scale logging that has resulted in deforestation (“tumutol”).

There’s much to think about in these days of government corruption and unabated poverty, but this issue deserves space in public attention and commitment. CS

For copies of “Philippine Native Trees 404: Rooted and Rising,” email Green Convergence at greenconvergencephil@gmail.com.