03/05/2026
𝐀𝐧𝐠 𝐆𝐚𝐡𝐮𝐦 𝐧𝐠 𝐊𝐚𝐭𝐮𝐭𝐮𝐛𝐨𝐧𝐠 𝐆𝐮𝐛𝐚𝐭
An overview and review of Philippine Native Trees 404: Rooted and Rising
Renato Redentor Constantino, 28 April 2026, Club Filipino
Patnubayan nawa tayong lahat ni Leonard. Paumnahin din sa lahat. Sampung beses kong sinubukang tumanggi ngunit kumbaga sa basketbol, ang score po ay Imelda Sarmiento, 100, at ako po ay zero. Ang consolation prize ko lang ay nandito rin po kayong lahat dahil sa powers niya.
She goes by many names; I call her Tita Ime, a person whose power of persuasion defies all laws of physics. She is a force of nature. No one can say no to her. You can try but in the end all I can say is God bless and may the Force be with you.
I ask everyone to focus on the next speakers, especially Dr. Lillian Rodriguez and Jayson Mansibang. They are the real experts. They are botanists, their expertise is unparalleled, and they are incredibly generous with their knowledge. The only views I can offer is that of a reader, and my apologies again. This might be among the strangest overviews you’ll have encountered.
To state the obvious, this is a mighty book. If you drop it on your foot, it will break your bones.
Philippine Native Trees 404: Rooted and Rising gives us 183 species, 266 sibling-species, 2,332 photos, 63 families, and the work of 150 writers and photographers. There are more native trees featured in this book compared to what is in books 101, 202, and 303. The most amazing fact of all is that its editors will also be the first to tell you this book is still scratching the surface of the incredible diversity we have been blessed with, which too many continue to neglect.
Maybe this is why the first thing you’ll notice is the cover, which combined the magic of layout artist Snowy Sarmiento and the art of Katya Angara. They have given what is already an amazing book the cover it deserves, and it is mesmerizing.
Katya used crows and native blooms, including the highly stylized Capparis micracantha or halubagat, and Bombax ceiba, or the malabulak. Unlike this book’s three predecessors, Katya’s art makes the purpose of Rooted and Rising sing loud because it suggests to the reader they are not mere viewers or passive readers. It compels the reader not just to imagine the forest, but to re-imagine their place—the role they wish to play in their finite stay on this planet, to remain rooted in native plants and trees but to rise in their defense as well.
What a strange book we’re launching today. Nakakawindang! This is not a book for science colleges or biology departments. It is a book for social science students and faculty. It reminds readers in great detail why native forests are so vital to our survival as a nation. Rooted and Rising also reminds readers that scientists studying nature, or sociologists and development workers supporting communities that rely on and protect our forests, should themselves be protected, not murdered.
This is not a book of botany. It is a book about political science. As I wrote in the book’s afterword, “Some of us have grown used to jingoistic declarations that come with patriotic pledges, made often by loud men vowing to defend our territory with the last drop of their blood against superpowers claiming our islands as their own. How brave they must sound, offering protection to remote parts of the archipelago they are unlikely to have set foot on or touched, smelled, and tasted. Yet they will also not lift a finger to fix the canal in their neighborhood or defend Philippine native trees within their reach, targeted for destruction by real estate companies, mining firms, and other businesses.” Yet our backyards, rivers, lowlands and mountains are all part of our sovereignty.
This book is not for the libraries of schools of biology. It should be one of the most important publications on the shelves of literature departments, accessible to students and teachers alike. I consider this book the largest collection of love letters I’ve ever encountered in my life. There is intimacy in its pages. A story in every naming. A chest of memories that bind generations.
It is certainly a multilingual book that employs and combines the language of art, love, and science. The botanist Jayson Mansibang reminds us in the book that seeking truth is seeking proof, by employing the careful art of naming life. Each name, each classification, is an attempt to understand what is real.
Ang mga nagmamahal ng hayag o patago – bistado sa librong ito. May ilan na piniling bumalik-balik sa mga dati nilang iniibig. Halimbawa, ang ating master of ceremonies, si Raymund Villanueva ng Altermidya. Rewarded ang curiosity niya nang balikan niya ang kanyang romansa—ang iniirog niyang Casuarina quisetifolia, o ang agoho. Sinulat man niya sa 101 ang kanyang pag-ibig sa puno, salamat sa agoho, pollinated siya uli – this time by his discovery of the elongated flower of the male and and the globular flower of the female, and the fascinating way the agoho reproduces and extends its reach.
Others celebrate hearts, such as Celine Murillo, who seems always ready to give particular gifts to so many today. Regularly, she shares to countless people the poetry of the forest. But in this book she writes of Bhesa paniculata, or the kuela which she talks of with whispered affection, with its exquisite heart-shaped fruit and green leathery leaves, and the distinct touch of family it brought her: she shares that while marveling at the kuela and composing her contribution to this book, she was gifted “with a sigh in the breeze and then birdsong.” Celine wrote of the moment in such a delicate and fragile manner I tilted my head as I read and returned to her words and I found myself softly smiling back at the page.
Then there are those who seek pleasure, like John Sherwin Felix. Because he is a gloriously stubborn person, what he seeks he usually finds, as you will understand when you read his essay in the book. His chosen native tree is Durio graveolens, or the dugyan which he tells us opens up when it is ripe, truly, as he demonstrates, like a Demogorgon for those familiar with the TV series Stranger Things. The flesh of dugyan, wrote Sherwin, “is lipstick red” and it has a slight perfume, which is strange because it is sometimes called the red durian. The fruit itself, John tells us, is mmmmm… malinamnam. Ang lakas mang-inggit ng sinulat niya, pero hindi niya tayo sadyang iniinggit. Binubuyo niya tayo. Binubulungan niya tayo: Tikman mo rin…
My friends, we are not launching a book of native trees today. What we are launching is a book of romance and desire. Filipino poets and novelists should have a copy of Rooted and Rising. And those who can afford the book should get even more copies, which they should donate to libraries of schools of creative writing, industrial design, visual communications, engineering, and architecture.
We have so many people considered learned and educated who remain almost willfully ignorant of this cathedral of the multitudes, this living church of native light that allows us to thrive despite the gravity of challenges we face today.
Kailangan nating yakapin ang gahum ng katutubong gubat, itong gugma na kailangang diligan din ng gugma.
A better understanding of Philippine native trees will show us how the lore of the land was formed and why it can only further enrich our origin story. Ang kabog na nakatira sa matandang balete might also be Acerodon jubatus, a golden flying fox feeding on Ficus subcordata or Ficus crassiramea, a story pregnant with a thousand more stories. I myself wrote of Erythrina subumbrans, a rarang tree in Tagaytay lit up at night, which on many nights serves as a cathedral of fireflies.
This book gives us new eyes and renews the heart. It is at the root of understanding our nation’s past and where our future lies. For example, whether it is already part of the exhibit or not, this book will give us a deeper appreciation of the newly opened Manila Galleon museum once we realize the galleon trade – described by some as the first wave of globalization over centuries – could not have happened without Philippine native trees. Once they realized the particular timber of our land, Spaniards replaced baltic wood, which they knew rotted quickly, with bitaog, lauan, molave, banaba, and narra, all of which would last several decades longer while repelling cannonballs. Our native trees were incredibly beneficial to European trade and conquest. But not to our native forests. It’s been estimated that building a single galleon could require around 2,000 native trees.
Rooted and Rising is really our country’s newest book on Philippine history. Philippine Native Trees 404 tells us about the forests that protected and nourished our revolutionary ancestors, who remained rooted to the soil. That every native tree is a house of memory shared with the Filipino viewing, studying, or writing about it, and with the insects, birds, and small mammals that help sustain the forest.
In an island municipality in Pangasinan named Anda, there is a curious monument of history. It is a massive piece of art and it might be the only memorial in the entire country that has Rizal and Bonifacio on the same pedestal. Not only that, it’s probably the only one with two Rizals and two Bonifacios, and I suspect it is the only monument which depicts Bonifacio holding a book instead of a bolo or pistol. The monument is an outcome of many conversations I’ve had with my father in-law, Nestor Pulido, who was around 2005 the mayor of the town. He was a voracious reader, and he loved history and asked for something that spoke of our past. And so I suggested in detail a composition that truly reflects one of the most important moments in our past. And he had it made.
The memorial is an accurate portrayal of history, because it avoids the usual mistake, which elevates one person above everyone, instead of showing the flow of history. Bonifacio owed much to Rizal, and Rizal needed Bonifacio to realize what he could not. And between them and after were multitudes, including everyone who chose to join this book launch. To describe a forest is to speak of history, and to teach history is to describe a forest. Some trees rise far above the canopy, and even more form and thrive beneath as the forest’s understory. And on the ground, even more action. The fact is, no single tree or plant is ever eternal. But the forest is forever. Fruits, flowers, bark, branches, leaves on the ground, mycelial networks under the soil that established the internet of nature eons before the arrival of modern humans.
Please don’t leave Club Filipino without a copy of this magisterial book. It might just be the most subversive book you will encounter in a long while, just because of the way it directly and openly contests the relentless biocultural homogenization that is sweeping the world today, driven by the dictatorship of accumulation and consumption.
This book shows us the thriving life we must protect.
It allows us to locate ourselves and gives us a mighty reason to justify our tiny blip on this planet.
Read it. Use it. Share it. And together let us celebrate life.
Maraming salamat po. # # #
P.s. May ilang nagtanong - "Ano ang 'gahum'?" Ito ay bahagi ng wikang Filipino, at mula sa wikang Sebuano. Sa Ingles, minsan "hegemony," minsan "power," pero karaniwang ginagamit ng maraming dalubhasa ang mga salitang salin na para sa akin ay ngiwi - "ehemonya" o " hegemonya" o "kapangyarihan" na saliwa sa bigkas, haba, at parang lalong pinalalabo ang punto. Kumpara sa gahum, na maikli, tukoy ang saklaw maging political ang konteksto o mystical (katangiang lalong nagpapaganda pa). Ang wikang Filipino ay hindi Tagalog lamang. Maraming Sebuanong salita ito (tulad ng karaniwang ginagamit nang "katarungan" na mula sa salitang "tarong") at kailangan pang payamanin at palawakin pa ng husto ang mga ito sa Filipino nang lalong gumanda ang tela ng ating wika, lalo na kung magpapakalalim tayo sa Hiligaynon, Waray, Kinaray-a, atbp.
