ENVIRONMENTAL group Green Convergence has launched recently the fourth volume of its “Philippine Native Trees” book series, offering a comprehensive look at native trees and their intertwined roots with Filipino heritage and identity.

Launched at Club Filipino in Greenhills, San Juan, the 980- page book “Philippine Native Trees 404: Rooted & Rising” showcases personal accounts, botanical information and photos as well as a compilation of 404 species of native trees for planting as alternative to exotic trees.

Authors and editors Jayson Mansibang and Lillian Jennifer Rodriguez said they drew inspiration for the book from two prominent late environmentalists: Oscar M. Lopez (OML), the patriarch of the Lopez Group; and Leonard Co, a renowned botanist.

“Hindi niya tinago ang kaalaman…Ibinahagi niya ito sa susunod na henerasyon [He did not keep his knowledge to himself… he shared it for the next generation],” Rodriguez said about Co during the book launch.

Victoria Segovia, Green Convergence president, grounded the book launch in a clear sense of purpose: to celebrate the country’s rich and diverse natural heritage.

“Our native trees are silent witnesses to our history, protectors of our biodiversity and vital allies in our response to climate change,” Segovia said, framing the book as “a tangible response to today’s growing ecological challenges.”

The book launch also gave First Philippine Holdings Corporation (FPH) chairman Federico R. Lopez (FRL) a time to recall fond memories with OML and Co, two individuals who greatly influenced his own love and appreciation for nature.

Influence

He acknowledged Co’s influence in FPH and First Gen Corporation, the country’s leading renewable energy producer and the parent firm of Energy Development Corporation (EDC).

EDC is pursuing a target to plant 10 million trees around the country under the BINHI program.

“In many ways, he [Co] helped shape our own reforestation journey at First Gen Geothermal. Because Leonard taught us something profound: that restoration is not simply planting trees. It is helping restore relationship—between species, between places, between people and the living systems that sustain them,” FRL said.

He also cherished the memory of OML. “My dad had what I can only describe as a lifelong affair with trees, biodiversity and nature. Even today, I vividly remember how my siblings and I grew up always surrounded by trees, animals and the outdoors,” FRL said, adding that his parents “were always growing something or another.”

He narrated that, more than 50 years ago, OML planted a sapling of a tree called bombax. The tree now towers at more than 100 feet over the family’s ancestral home in San Juan. But every time a typhoon barrels down the metropolis, strong winds break and strip the bombax of its branches.

“There were many times during our lives that the branches would break during a typhoon and then my mom would say, ‘Well it looks like the end of that tree.’ She kept saying it was dead,” FRL said.

One day, he researched about the bombax and told her, “Mom, it does that in a storm. The branch will fall just so the whole tree can survive; but after that, it will grow again. And it does for maybe more than 50 to 60 years. I told her, that’s really the symbol of the resilience of nature that we can all learn from.”

FRL said the lesson from the bombax reminds him of his father. He explained that “[f ]or me, the towering bombax has become a symbol of what he does best: allowing things to take root, then nurturing, and then growing them to stability and longevity.

“That bombax tree taught me early that legacy is not what we leave behind, but what we help continue growing,” the FPH chairman stressed. “And perhaps that is one of the great lessons trees and nature teach. They remind us that life flourishes through reciprocity.”

By Joel Gaborni