A Final Salute to Familiar Trees in my Farmville Farm

Finally! I have kicked off the habit of playing Farmville. It has been a full month since I became farm sober. Honestly I could admit that at the thick of it, I was playing planting and harvesting for two hours in a day. It really became an addiction, taking much of my time from doing the more urgent things, like blogging, hehehe. But what is important is that I did manage to stop doing it...further. But I would say I did get to build an awesome kick-ass farm (yoo-hoo for self praise!).

But as a last indulgement and salute to my Farmville habit, I would blog about some of the familiar trees I have enjoyed harvesting for the last year in my cyber farm. Since it is virtual, some of these Farmville fruit trees could not even co-exist with each other in real life. (imagine palms growing at the foot of snow cap mountains). In the natural world, some of these simulated species would not even get to grow in a same land parcel with the others because of the different growth requirements. Most of the original trees offered to be virtually farmed were temperate and subtropical tree species, but some tropical exotics did get into the Farmville mix. Sadly none of them are true Philippine natives. So we have to really give our own Philippine produce trees a boost in the farming popularity race.

The layered cartoonized trees at the top of the picture are supposed to be durian trees. Durian is Durio zibethanus, which is commonly grown in Mindanao and is an argued native of the Philippines. From what i heard is that biologists claim to have seen really ancient trees of durian growing in the Mindanao and Palawan forests.

This tree with a lot of stilted roots is called a banyan tree. Banyan is Ficus benghalensis from India but is closely related to a lot of strangler figs or members of the genus Ficus in the Philippines, including balete (Ficus philippinensis), salisi (Ficus benjamina) and dalakit (Ficus concinna). They bring out aerial roots which eventually become secondary trunks.

The lobed-leaved trees are bread trees (Artocarpus altilis) of 'Mutiny on the Bounty' fame. They are related to your common jackfruit or langka (Artocarpus heterophyllus) and the native antipolo (Artocarpus blancoi). The bread fruit now grows a plenty in the provinces and mixed with some local ingredients in Filipino cuisine. It is called kamansi, dalungyan or rimas in Luzon.

There are a few more familiar trees ttat could be cultivated in Farmville. But the bigger part are trees usually common in international fruit trade, thus more popular produce in bigger developed countries ( like apples, pears, avocados, apricots etc.) - trees which most Filipinos could not grow in their own backyards. But they sure make one heck of a virtual orchard, a fruiting dream plantation. I will certainly miss my Farmville farm. But I love having more time doing more productive stuff. I am better off saying goodbye to virtual farming. Sayonara, Farmville!