A surprising discovery you will make when looking at old yellowed photographs of Baguio is that at the turn of the century, there were probably fewer trees growing in the city than there are today. Contrary to the common perception, Baguio's history is not rooted at all on the tall majestic pine tree, but rather on a plant very much lower to the ground: green algae.
These "paper trees" lining Harrison
Road are not native species from
Baguio. They were imported from
Chicago and planted around the
Burnham Park as part of an early
and ambitious project in planetary
engineering--the aritificial greening
of Baguio in the 1900's
Geographically, the accurate ancient name of Baguio is Kafagway. Yet it was the term "bag-ew" that soaked into the consciousness of the city’s pioneers because of the way this plant thoroughly dominated the landscape. It grew on rocks, on the ground, on the barks of trees--it even grew on flotsam drifting across the old swamp that Burnham lake used to be.
There are, in fact, very few references to the pine tree in the city’s precolonial or post-modern traditions. Even the native Ibalois do not have a name for this tree. They have a name for its aromatic wood which burned bright, strong and fragrant--saleng. But the tree itself goes by no particular name in the vernacular. This is because the pine tree did not really grow in thick clumps around the old Kafagway settlement as some presume.
Forestry authorities today still use many of these old pre-World War II vintage aerial photographs as reference. Now Google Earth makes it possible to look down on every square inch of the planet (even Baguio City), and these old aerial photos provide a rich reference of comparative data on the extent, or retreat, of Baguio City’s mysterious treeline.
The outlying areas were thickly forested, for sure. And most of these well-identified forests--such as Busol, Ambiong and Buyog--still are. They are forest reservations by law and while squatting is a problem, these areas largely remain forested.
What is amazing was how the early American city administrators--visionaries like Eusebius J. Halsema--transformed the treeless pastureland that the central city district used to be into the lush city parks they are today. It was nothing short of planetary engineering. Sadly, today the success of that project is long forgotten. The city doesn't even have a decent seedling project anymore.
One of these stately tall Norfolk pine trees is planted
at each corner of Burnham Lake. They are just under
a century old, thriving well in the sub-tropical climate
of Baguio. However, these trees can only reproduce
in the sub-zero temperatures of their original Norfolk,
Virginia habitat. They have been unable to produce
viable cones here, so when the last of these majestic
trees die off, their species will vanish from Baguio's
landscape forever--which is probably less than 20 or
so short years from now.