Land of the Large

Large royal palms 

Refreshing gazebo

Sunday, a few weeks ago, I went with the Metro Home team to Silang, Cavite to interview Benny Velasco for the magazine. The architect was very gracious and he had a very nice garden with an enviable selection of palms and cycads.  We had the opportunity to view and take pictures of the amazing garden. It will be out in the August issue of Metro Home and Entertaining.

Large pungapung

Benny took us to an old farm which belongs to a friend in Amadeo and toured us around the rolling terrain of the rustic town. Here we found numerous exotics like anahao palms and royal palms growing to large sizes Some parts of the property had nice gazebo tucked underneath the shade of the landscape palms, but a few  areas still remain underdeveloped.  

Large Alocasia, bigger than Devi, assoc ed.

The large antipolo tree

In these untouched natural pockets, the old vegetation of Cavite still is trying to hold on, establishing a foothold in the fragile environment. In a steep slope, very large specimens of Alocasia macrorrhiza grow taller than people. Beyond the cover of woody shrubs and weeds, pungapung or Amorphophallus paenifolius leaves appear like strange looking umbrellas with spotted green stems.  And at one corner, a towering specimen of antipolo looms over the gorge, covering the steep ravine with a huge pile of dried discarded leaves.

It is nice to find that this part of Cavite still hid a few indigenous surprises.  We have to be optimistic that the natives' homecourt advantage will prevail over the exotics.