Panagbenga postscript: Perennials keeping Baguio’s status as flower city

THOSE driving around, from Burnham Park to Campo Sioco, to Mlititary Cut- off, Country Club Road and down to Leonard Wood Rd., find the former mayor’s advocacy valid. The vine is sturdy, hardly needing water and care, so unlike sensitive and fleeting annuals, even while some tend to grow slowly and may take years to bear bracts and flowers.

While in that personal search, I began to take notice of the coral tree, the ubiquitous hibiscus and even the red bottle brush that my old man, thanks to his superiors, learned to identify by its scientific name: callistemon.

The coral tree, together with the golden bush, is a more recent introduction here than the African tulip, the eraser tree, together with the several species of now towering eucalyptus that then mayor Alfonso Tabora had lined up around the Burnham Park. While producing whitish- red flowers that dangle like earrings in succession, the coral tree got its name from its furrowed bark resembling corals. The golden bush, now meekly producing tiny blue flowers and yellow fruits, was named for its bright greenish-yellow leaves.

Perhaps the only native perennial now in bloom, the tough morning glory vine sheds lavender, bell-like flowers now dotting the fences of untended lawns of vacation homes along South Drive until Ilusorio Drive, towards Pacdal Circle and Outlook Drive.

A bane to young trees and shrubs choked by its tentacles, the vine has merited several tips on “How to Kill A Morning Glory Vine” on the internet. One proclaims the effectiveness of pouring hot water into its roots. The vine had survived many wars among Baguio boys of old who, long before the entry of battles of “transformers” on line, would chop the vine into pieces as projectiles for their weapon of choice that the late Baguio boy and journalist Peppot Ilagan called PAL-S-11-T, otherwise known as slingshot.

The summer explosion of perennials will linger until we prepare to send our kids and grandkids back to school. The quiet, and therefore sometimes unnoticed display, is also harmless compared to the instant, fleeting, expensive and polluting evening fireworks display that caps the annual Baguio Flower Festival.

There’s still time to see the remaining laven- der jacaranda bells clinging to the trees. Perhaps their sight can evoke a higher meaning similar to what spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle observed to open his book, “A New Earth”:

“Earth, 114 million years ago, one morning just after sunrise: The first flower ever to appea on the planet opens up to receive the rays of the sun. Prior to this momentous event that heralds an evolutionary transformation in the life of