Letting the Takipan Take Off!

The takipan with an eight month inflorescence  

I have a takipan (Caryota sp. aff. rumphiana), a solitary fishtail palm native to the Philippines.  I have had it since 2011, when I bought it from a weekend market, on a trip to Baler in Aurora. Then, it was only about two feet tall with one opened leaf and another about to emerge. From 2011 to 2016, it was grown in the confines of a twelve inch diameter plastic pot, growing from two feet to about my shoulder height, and adding about a handful of leaf rotations to its developing crown.  When I transferred houses in 2016, I took the potted takipan with me to the new house and out-planted it in soil in the farthest corner of the lot.  

The property I transferred to has a small garden that is about 25 to 30 square meters. It is not much, but when I started to develop it it had an existing kamansi (Artocarpus probably camansi) tree growing at one side. Since 2016 I have already plant a few bantulinao specimens (Diospyros ferrea), a salingbobog tree (Crataeva religiosa), a baraibai (Cerbera manghas), a samuyao (Citrus westeri) and a few other palms alongside the takipan.  

The takipan seemed to have liked its new home. A year after it was out-planted it was already taller than I was in 2017. At about the time of the pandemic, the palm was already competing for canopy space with the kamansi tree casting much shade in my garden.  The heavy arbor has drastically changed the composition of the garden, from the sun loving plants I was collecting - which I transferred from the rooftop garden in the old house - to shade loving plants like aroids, ferns and understory plants. By the time that indoor plants became popular in the pandemic, my garden has lost more of the succulents in favor of the shade tolerant species. 

Towering and nearing the wires

In 2022, the takipan palm has grown taller than my two story apartment structure and towers over the whole of the garden, but its size has presented a new problem - its very huge compound leaves were encroaching over street space and nearly touching the high tension wires adjacent the property wall. I hired a gardener to cut down some of the leaves to temporarily alleviate the problem.  A year after, I came home one day to find the leaves again unceremoniously by the Meralco maintenance crew.  They left the cut leaves still hanging precariously on the tree which I later had removed by hired help. As the palm has become a source of added anxiety, I reflected on cutting down the tree entirely.

In May of 2024 I asked a gardener friend to help me cut down the takipan.  Her crew came to the house one Saturday morning to assess it and how to go about felling the tree.  One gardener climbed up its  crown and discovered that the takipan was starting to bring out flower shoots. I have seen fishtail palms flower in other gardens before.  Their inflorescence is interesting but a long and tedious process. It appears that the palm does not want me to cut it. I could hear it say 'let me be and I will shower you with my flowers'. But seriously I became curious in the prospects of observing a full grown takipan flower in my backyard.  And since the plant is starting to flower, it will concentrate its energy on bringing out the inflorescence and hopefully less on new large leaves. I decided not to cut the takipan and let it display its flowering glory!
    

 I am trying it out if i could recover this blog and it seems I could. Will continue to write in it in the next few days. 

Tree in the Toilet

The Lawton 'Park and Ride' has spaces extended to the sidewalk, eating up tree space but not cutting them down 

 

A big tree inside the male toilet

Big tree while you are making a big pee

Quick Post: I have not gone to the Lawton 'Park and Ride' transport terminal before. It was a surprise to find a large tree present and built around with a toilet. The tree was right smack in the middle of the urinals section.  The space was just enough to allow a person to use the urinals.  But hey at least the designer attempted to save something that is green in a highly urbanized area.  I am not sure though what the tree species is (probably mango or mahogany - which I know is not native) as I was in a hurry to catch my bus. 

There are Bees in the Garden

The bees have more than double in number

The bee hive in one
 corner of the garden

Quick Post: 

I have bees in the garden! I am not sure what kind they are but their number is growing.  A few days ago when I first saw them I could count how many they are peeking from the weep hole in one of the terracotta pots we inverted to serve as stand for the other plants. Now there seem to be many guarding the entrance to their hive.  I wonder how the hive looks like in the inside.  But I will not attempt to even open it.

A week ago, the termite exterminator I hired came by to render his last contract inspection.  I told  him about the bee nest so he carefully sprayed around the garden so as not to disturb them.  But I was still afraid that they might get affect.  But apparently they were not affected as the number of bees guarding the nest more than doubled.   

The Pili/pili Name According to Zip

The edible part of the pili nut once the hard shell is removed 

The pili is a nice tree with
 glossy leaves

Sorry if the follow up answer on the Pili-pili dilemma is late.  I will try to catch up on posting some of the new blogs. With regards to Zip's assignment on how the town was named, her boss told her that Pili the town was not named after the pili tree but rather on the fact it was the chosen (Filipino word for 'chosen' is pili too).  Honestly I was disappointed when I learned this as I was gunning for the tree connection.  

The pili tree has a nice profile

Goyi Solis, who was one of our coordinators, was also curious about the town's name so she googled to get to the bottom of it.  She said it came out that the naming of Pili town is already obscure, that the 2 theories, about the tree and the fact it was chosen, stand accepted. In any case it could  not be discounted that the pili tree is associated with the existence of this loved town in Cam Sur that whether it was named after the tree or not, the ubiquitous presence of the fruit (and hopefully the tree itself) would help in promoting a cultural character for Pili.

They make all kinds of treats from pili and they sell everywhere in Naga which is nearby

The Pili-pili Dilemma

The iconographic staple in most tourist attractions is to have the place name blown up as a selfie stop and CWC has one in its main attraction  

The Naga airport is actually in Pili town

I was invited to talk about native trees in Camarines Sur.  It was my first time in the province.  When I arrived with the other speakers from Manila, I learned that we were to be billeted in the municipality of Pili.  Knowing pili is also the name of a local endemic tree (Canarium ovatum and some relatives) and that Cam Sur is in Bicol, which is pili country, I was curious to ask our welcoming party why the town was actually named Pili. I was not able to get a straight answer.  I further asked if there are still pili trees around in the town and before I could get a reply, I a grown pili tree came into view around the corner.  

I then rephrased my question to whether the Pili town is known for pili trees or is there a pili industry locally.  The answer given to me was that pili is more known to be grown in Sorsogon which was two provinces away.  So I wondered, if Pili town was named as such but is not anymore known for the pili tree, what actually defines Pili as a town.  This time I got an answer in form of a question: CWC? - which stands for CamSur Watersports Complex. I just left my curiosity hanging for the meantime.

The main watersports pool has the more experienced, especially foreigners, doing acrobatic turns and moves in the water.

An hour or so later we met our hosts from The Trees That Bind Inc., an NGO with an advocacy on native trees (I have not yet explored the actual goals of the said NGO so I would reserve in another entry explaining about it).  I met with Goyi Solis, who extended the invitation for the talk, and Zip, from the local government unit.  I asked them about my Pili-pili  dilemma, which Zip vowed to make her assignment from me.

The newer lodging facilities in the CamSur Watersports Complex 

We arrived in CamSur late in the afternoon (our flight was delayed) so we only got the chance to walk around CWC grounds - which appears to be exciting.  Our companion, Dr. Ephraim Cercado (from the Native Tree Enthusiasts Group) could not help himself to try wakeboarding.  It seemed to be a fun thing to experience but I did not have the courage to try myself.  So far with what I have heard, it is CWC that is the main attraction of Pili as a town. Let us wait for what Zip has to say about it.      

Kapok Season in a Few Days

The bagras trees were planted onto the amphitheater steps

The amphitheater out the classroom window

Quick Post: I was having class yesterday in Building 1.  It was a drawing studio class so when my students were doing their drawing plates, I noticed that the natural light was nice in the college's amphitheater.  The bagras (Eucalyptus deglupta) trees the faculty planted several years ago are reaching about 8 meters in height or more.  But still towering over them is the sole kapok tree (Ceiba pentandra) which is about to wreak its fruiting havoc in a few days.  The heavily fruit-burdened branches will release the snow like fibers attached to the wannabe-airborne kapok seeds.  It is like snow,  a spectacle to see - but will be quite detrimental to ones having asthma.  Soon the whole college floor will be teeming with the fluffy kapok fibers. Time to bring out my again fashionable face mask. 

The impending asthma danger that is the kapok fruits